Higgs Enhancement for the Dark Matter Relic Density

Abstract

We consider the long-range effect of the Higgs on the density of thermal-relic dark matter. While the electroweak gauge boson and gluon exchange have been previously studied, the Higgs is typically thought to mediate only contact interactions. We show that the Sommerfeld enhancement due to a 125 GeV Higgs can deplete TeV-scale dark matter significantly, and describe how the interplay between the Higgs and other mediators influences this effect. We discuss the importance of the Higgs enhancement in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, and its implications for experiments.