Relic abundance of dark matter particles: new formulation and new result of abundance calculation

Abstract

A new theoretical framework for computation of the relic abundance of cold dark matter particles such as LSP is presented and some generic features of new results are discussed. The most important is a generalization of the Boltzmann equation to include off-shell effects and its thermal average over cosmic medium. It is shown that at very low temperatures, much below the mass of annihilating particles, equilibrium abundance is suppressed only by powers of temperature instead of the exponential Boltzmann factor. This change gives a larger relic abundance when heavy particles freeze out at these low temperatures.