Weakly interacting massive particle

Uncommon card · No. 154619

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are hypothetical particles that are one of the proposed candidates for dark matter. These particles would have mass and would interact with gravity, would have been created in abundance during the Big Bang, and would since have reduced in number because of self-annihilation caused by their weak interaction. There exists no formal definition of a WIMP, but broadly, it is an elementary particle that interacts via gravity and any other force (or forces) that is as weak as or weaker than the weak nuclear force, but also non-vanishing in strength. Many WIMP candidates are expected to have been produced thermally in the early Universe, similarly to the particles of the Standard Model according to Big Bang cosmology, and usually will constitute cold dark matter. Obtaining the correct abundance of dark matter today via thermal production requires a self-annihilation cross section of ⟨σv⟩ ≃ 3×10−26 cm3⋅s−1, which is roughly what is expected for a new...

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