Constraints on Light Dark Matter from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Abstract

We examine the effects of relic dark matter annihilations on big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). The magnitude of these effects have scale simply with the dark matter mass and annihilation cross-section, which we derive. Estimates based on these scaling behaviors indicate that BBN severely constrains hadronic and radiative dark matter annihilation channels in the previously unconsidered dark matter mass region MeV $\lesssim m_{\chi} \lesssim 10$ GeV. Interestingly, we find that BBN constraints on hadronic annihilation channels are competitive with similar bounds derived from the cosmic microwave background.