Effective WIMPs

Understand

The 'WIMP miracle' for the relic abundance of thermal dark matter motivates weak scale dark matter with renormalizable couplings to standard model particles.

• We study minimal models with such couplings that explain dark matter as a thermal relic.
• The models contain a singlet dark matter particle with cubic renormalizable couplings between standard model particles and 'partner' particles with the same gauge quantum numbers as the standard model particle.
• The dark matter has spin 0, 1/2, or 1, and may or may not be its own antiparticle.