Impact of non-thermal phase-space distributions on dark matter abundance in secluded sectors

Abstract: Many new physics models include secluded sectors that interact little with the Standard Model and whose internal interactions control the dark matter abundance. If these same interactions are responsible for maintaining kinematic equilibrium within the secluded sector, it is possible that the phase-space distributions will differ considerably from their thermal values during freeze-out. This can potentially result in deviations of the dark matter abundance from that computed under the assumption of thermal distributions. In this paper, we revisit dark matter abundance computations for a benchmark secluded sector by numerically tracking the phase-space distributions. Namely, we show that the dark matter abundance can deviate considerably from standard results during the freeze-out process, but that a longer period of annihilation ultimately leaves only a slight excess.