Cornering WIMP Dark Matter
Prof. Thomas Schwetz-Mangold (KIT Karlsruhe)

One of the most popular candidates for Dark Matter in the Universe is a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), whose cosmological abundance is determined by the thermal freeze-out process in the early Universe. I will argue that this hypothesis currently is crucially tested from different sides. The statement is illustrated by using a so-called simplified Dark Matter model, where the Standard Model is extended by the Dark Matter particle and one or two mediator particles. The model is motivated by gauge invariance and perturbative unitarity. We find that a thermal WIMP is allowed only in special regions in the parameter space, either close to a resonant enhancement of the annihilation cross section, or at least one mediator particle has to be lighter than the Dark Matter.