Revisiting neutrino-assisted self-interacting dark matter
Abstract
We assess neutrino-assisted dark matter self-scattering in two scalar-mediator realizations by combining mediator-resolved potentials, numerical scattering calculations, thermal relic production, and the adopted observational constraints. In the t-channel case, the adopted laboratory and cosmological bounds suppress the neutrino force contribution at points reproducing the relic abundance and yielding sizable self-interactions, which are dominated by tree-level mediator exchange. Sommerfeld enhancement and early kinetic decoupling can change the relic abundance by up to 50\% in the light mediator regime. In the s-channel case, thermal freeze-out fixes the coupling, leaving self-scattering well below the order of magnitude required for explanation of small-scale structure of the universe. An analytic upper envelope explains this shortfall of more than eleven orders of magnitude relative to the self-interacting dark matter benchmark. These results establish that, under the adopted constraints and thermal relic assumptions, the neutrino force cannot account for astrophysically relevant dark matter self-scattering in either realization.
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BibTeX
@misc{wang2026revisiting,
title = {{Revisiting neutrino-assisted self-interacting dark matter}},
author = {Luqi Wang and Shu-Yuan Guo and Xuewen Liu and Bin Zhu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.06151},
eprint = {2610.06151},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06151},
note = {CC0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Revisiting neutrino-assisted self-interacting dark matter
AU - Luqi Wang
AU - Shu-Yuan Guo
AU - Xuewen Liu
AU - Bin Zhu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.06151
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06151
AB - We assess neutrino-assisted dark matter self-scattering in two scalar-mediator realizations by combining mediator-resolved potentials, numerical scattering calculations, thermal relic production, and the adopted observational constraints. In the t-channel case, the adopted laboratory and cosmological bounds suppress the neutrino force contribution at points reproducing the relic abundance and yielding sizable self-interactions, which are dominated by tree-level mediator exchange. Sommerfeld enhancement and early kinetic decoupling can change the relic abundance by up to 50\% in the light mediator regime. In the s-channel case, thermal freeze-out fixes the coupling, leaving self-scattering well below the order of magnitude required for explanation of small-scale structure of the universe. An analytic upper envelope explains this shortfall of more than eleven orders of magnitude relative to the self-interacting dark matter benchmark. These results establish that, under the adopted constraints and thermal relic assumptions, the neutrino force cannot account for astrophysically relevant dark matter self-scattering in either realization.
ER -