Strongly Interacting Light Dark Matter

Abstract

We discuss a class of Dark Matter (DM) models that, although inherently strongly coupled, appear weakly coupled at small-energy and fulfill the WIMP miracle, generating a sizable relic abundance through the standard freeze-out mechanism. Such models are based on approximate global symmetries that forbid relevant interactions; fundamental principles, like unitarity, restrict these symmetries to a small class, in such a way that the leading interactions between DM and the Standard Model are captured by effective operators up to dimension-8. The underlying strong coupling implies that these interactions become much larger at high-energy and represent an interesting novel target for LHC missing-energy searches.