{"record":{"author":{"account_ref":null,"orcid":null},"builds_on":[],"content_schema":"pubphys.content.revision/1","content_sha256":"4cfe8473dee3ba81afd789f7c177c7400ca39d0677441ed6b7388dddf9e32f21","created":"2026-10-03T07:18:02Z","files":[],"origin":{"assisted_by":[],"kind":"seed"},"parents":["5475cf5dc5b1a72283d26dc95dc6e00d7ea4e00096a7c6492e409a1816eeb011","ec960d90ef6443b334f903e8c930243add5a04b385f93a9075b8c991e11006cd"],"salt":"7a596da2ecf6555607a945146358387bbfaf0381047c5f7f53b656e8981b3c45","schema":"pubphys.record/2","site":"pubphys.com","target":null,"type":"revision"},"content":{"answer_type":"yes-no","assisted_by":[],"external_id":"cosmo.dark-matter-identity.wimp-thermal-relic","kind":"well-posed","literature_status":"open","n":"1","parents":[{"note":"","parent_revision":"ec960d90ef6443b334f903e8c930243add5a04b385f93a9075b8c991e11006cd","relation":"special_case"}],"plain":"A popular idea is that dark matter is a heavy particle that was in equilibrium with ordinary matter in the hot early universe and froze out at the right abundance. Underground detectors look for it hitting atomic nuclei.","posed_since":"1977","precise":"Does a particle of mass $1\\,\\mathrm{GeV}\\text{ to }100\\,\\mathrm{TeV}$, produced by thermal freeze-out with annihilation cross section $\\langle \\sigma v\\rangle \\sim 3e-26\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{3}/\\mathrm{s}$, make up $\\Omega_c$? Answer yes (a detection of nuclear recoils, annihilation products or collider production consistent with the thermal cross section) or no for named benchmarks: exclusion of Higgs-portal and Z-portal thermal relics by direct detection, and of the pure wino ($\\sim 2.9\\,\\mathrm{TeV}$) and pure Higgsino ($\\sim 1.1\\,\\mathrm{TeV}$) thermal relics by gamma-ray line and continuum searches from the Galactic Center. Thermal relics with loop-suppressed nuclear couplings (pure Higgsino, $\\sigma_{\\mathrm{SI}} \\sim 1e-49\\text{ to }1e-48\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{2}$) lie at or below the xenon neutrino background floor, so direct detection alone cannot close the question.","problem_ref":null,"references":"","settled_by":"Liquid-xenon or argon detectors reaching the neutrino background floor over $10\\,\\mathrm{GeV}$ to $10\\,\\mathrm{TeV}$, combined with gamma-ray line and continuum searches sensitive to wino and Higgsino annihilation at the thermal cross section.","status_note":"LZ (2025, 4.2 tonne-years) found no excess and excluded spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross sections above $2.2e-48\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{2}$ at 40 GeV (90 percent confidence).","title":"Is dark matter a thermal-relic weakly interacting massive particle?","topic_ref":"f3bf70488fa9272a7f437ab80aa4c3a6b7aa08c428f06c436d4e947e2dc94a69"},"attested":{"attestation":{"batch":null,"client_id":null,"id_token_sha256":null,"kind":"platform"},"record_hash":"18165cc72e0dec13586c094e5a2443f7e9f174c5d263479f00ebb77afa360b9b","schema":"pubphys.attested/1"},"envelope":{"attested_hash":"9bb06117fd89c407229bed75087bc38f3821ed2f67f8a7401c58eca4d0bf6438","platform_signature":{"key_id":"c6afc19b31429869751f06879c75cd64ea92654423d15b44be775bf1310a60da","sig":"JYLmlAWiUGAGXydRzfLmfTDiLSYjsDc71j7mjx_0xIyhS42ol18lZNpggCxnLumhQdcZQF9jxbMex6xka5wFDg"},"schema":"pubphys.envelope/1"},"record_hash":"18165cc72e0dec13586c094e5a2443f7e9f174c5d263479f00ebb77afa360b9b","leaf_index":1247}