{"record":{"author":{"account_ref":null,"orcid":null},"builds_on":[],"content_schema":"pubphys.content.revision/1","content_sha256":"8ba8074ee1ed1bea69000b51bc5a76c0f6be4e580a4729d8ef3a9f9cd5b4dbe5","created":"2026-10-15T23:43:22Z","files":[],"origin":{"assisted_by":[],"kind":"seed"},"parents":["18165cc72e0dec13586c094e5a2443f7e9f174c5d263479f00ebb77afa360b9b","ce59fb6cd812fc05906d0c60a71c75ea22bc686bcf38e7c3ef7010834d98ee7b"],"salt":"13760820c0f2706646f2973663c50aa6f062d27a85d50c0d47a8fe0bcd789887","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":"2","parents":[],"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 $\\langle \\sigma v\\rangle \\sim 3 \\times 10^{-26}\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{3}/\\mathrm{s}$, 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, $\\sigma_{\\mathrm{SI}} \\sim 10^{-49}\\text{ to }10^{-48}\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{2}$) lie at or below the xenon neutrino background floor, so direct detection alone cannot close the question.","problem_ref":"18165cc72e0dec13586c094e5a2443f7e9f174c5d263479f00ebb77afa360b9b","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 $2.2 \\times 10^{-48}\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{2}$ at 40 GeV (90 percent confidence).","title":"Is dark matter a thermal-relic weakly interacting massive particle?","topic_ref":null},"attested":{"attestation":{"batch":null,"client_id":null,"id_token_sha256":null,"kind":"platform"},"record_hash":"471a575a841aa560d72ba4bf42157eec643eee0c9e4ece8b6b4974f8fa448570","schema":"pubphys.attested/1"},"envelope":{"attested_hash":"b8cae91cd1fc0f7f5736bc41429de322a9058f85f1e280de8ad156da86251824","platform_signature":{"key_id":"c6afc19b31429869751f06879c75cd64ea92654423d15b44be775bf1310a60da","sig":"DGeagoSzeIAPltRU-sUnUjdzohMoaPGFhLn0qsc42z8RZq3FdVX2-E6bCtoFIZP_XCP6vvtVM12xBGnGGbAKCw"},"schema":"pubphys.envelope/1"},"record_hash":"471a575a841aa560d72ba4bf42157eec643eee0c9e4ece8b6b4974f8fa448570","leaf_index":3134}