Perturbative Unitarity of Strongly Interacting Massive Particle Models

Abstract

Dark pion is a promising candidate for the strongly interacting massive particle dark matter. A large pion self-coupling $m_{\pi }/f_{\pi }$ tends to be required for correct relic abundance, and hence the partial-wave amplitudes can violate the perturbative unitarity even for the coupling within naïve perturbative regime. We improve the partial-wave amplitudes in order to satisfy the optical theorem. We demonstrate that the improvement is relevant only for semi-relativistic pions, and thus this does not affect the self-scattering cross section at the cosmic structures. We also discuss the impact of the improvement of the $\pi \pi \pi \to \pi \pi$ scattering process, and we find that there is an upper bound on $m_{\pi }$ at which the correct relic abundance is never achieved even at large $m_{\pi }/f_{\pi }$ due to the optical theorem.

Comments: 17+26 pages, 5 figures, discussions improved, figures modified, version published in JHEP