Relic density of dark matter in the inert doublet model beyond leading order for the low mass region: 2. Co-annihilation

Abstract

We examine the relic density of the light mass dark matter region in the inert doublet model (IDM) when the dominant process is due to co-annihilation between the lightest neutral scalars of the model. The full one-loop electroweak corrections are computed in an on-shell scheme and are found to be well approximated as an effective cross-section expressed in terms of $Z$-observables. The electroweak corrections to the subdominant process which consists of an annihilation into an on-shell $W$ and an off-shell $W$, that is calculated as a annihilation into a 3-body final state, is also performed. The latter reveals an important dependence on a parameter that describes the self-interaction of the new scalars (solely within the dark sector), a parameter which is not accessible in tree-level calculations of standard model (SM)-IDM interactions.