Heavy Thermal Dark Matter From A New Collision Mechanism

We propose a new thermal freeze-out mechanism that results in dark matter masses exceeding the unitarity bound by many orders of magnitude, without violating perturbative unitarity or modifying the standard cosmology. The process determining the relic abundance is chi zeta(dagger) -> zeta zeta where chi is the dark matter candidate. For m(zeta) < m(chi) < 3m(zeta,chi) is cosmologically long-lived and scatters against the exponentially more abundant zeta. Therefore, such a process allows for exponentially heavier dark matter for the same interaction strength as a particle undergoing ordinary 2 -> 2 freeze-out, or equivalently, exponentially weaker interactions for the same mass. We demonstrate this mechanism in a leptophilic dark matter model, which allows for dark matter masses up to 10(9) GeV.