Dark matter models beyond the WIMP paradigm

Abstract

— Thermal freeze-out of a weakly interacting massive particle is the dominant paradigm for dark matter production. This scenario is now being probed by direct and indirect detection experiments, as well as at colliders. The lack of convincing signals motivates us to consider alternative scenarios. In this contribution we discuss a scenario where the dark matter abundance is controlled by a “vev flipflop”, which sets the relic abundance via a period of dark matter decay just before electroweak symmetry breaking. We describe the mechanism and show that it is successful in a wide range of parameter space before discussing detection possibilities.