Relic density of wino-like dark matter in the MSSM

Understand

The relic density of TeV-scale wino-like neutralino dark matter in the MSSM is subject to potentially large corrections as a result of the Sommerfeld effect.

• A recently developed framework enables us to calculate the Sommerfeld-enhanced relic density in general MSSM scenarios, properly treating mixed states and multiple co-annihilating channels as well as including off-diagonal contributions.
• Using this framework, including on-shell one-loop mass splittings and running couplings and taking into account the latest experimental constraints, we perform a thorough study of the regions of parameter space surrounding the well known pure-wino scenario: namely the effect of sfermion masses being non-decoupled and of allowing non-negligible Higgsino or bino components in the lightest neutralino.
• We further perform an investigation into the effect of thermal corrections and show that these can safely be neglected.