Speaker
Yassine El Mohtadi
(ICTP-AP, UCAS)
Description
We propose a novel mechanism for achieving the required kinetic equilibrium between dark matter and a radiation bath during the freeze-out of self-annihilating dark matter. This mechanism arises naturally in a class of strongly coupled models containing nearly massless axions. Focusing on a strongly interacting massive particle (SIMP) scenario augmented by a dark axion, we demonstrate that the observed dark matter relic abundance can be reproduced without invoking a portal between the dark and visible sectors.