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Gravitational evidence requires much more nonbaryonic matter than can be supplied by ordinary luminous material or by the baryon abundance permitted by nucleosynthesis. A stable, electrically neutral massive particle is a plausible cold component. Thermal production followed by cosmological particle freeze-out gives an additional motivation: an annihilation rate near a weak-interaction scale can leave an appreciable relic abundance. This is a mechanism and search hypothesis, not proof that the dark matter must be a WIMP or have any particular elastic-scattering cross section.

The plotted regions are conditional WIMP interpretations of different measurements. The experiments use different targets and distinguish signal from background differently:

The plot also includes CRESST experiment, whose cryogenic calcium-tungstate modules combine phonon and scintillation-light signals. Different nuclei contribute to its recoil interpretation. Its excess region is another conditional candidate region, not an extra confirmed detection.^[ref]

Around ten GeV, the shaded regions favour cross sections roughly $10^{-41}$–$10^{-40}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2$, while the XENON100 solid curve and the improved low-mass CDMS curve cut into or exclude much of those regions under the common elastic, spin-independent WIMP-nucleus scattering interpretation expressed per nucleon. There is tension within that shared model; the plot does not show mutually confirmed discoveries. electron backgrounds, threshold response, nuclear-recoil quenching factors, channeling assumptions and the halo velocity distribution can shift interpretations. Changing the interaction model can also alter target comparisons, but cannot establish a WIMP by assertion. The 100-live-day XENON100 result itself reported candidates compatible with estimated background.^[ref]

For a rough dimensional event estimate, $1\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2=10^{-4}{\mathrm{m}}^2$ givesIf a collider production cross section had this value, that small yield, before acceptance and backgrounds, would not support a likely discovery. The plotted nuclear-scattering cross section is not the LHC production cross section, however. Converting between them needs a mediator, couplings, parton distributions and production kinematics; a light stable WIMP would normally be inferred from missing transverse momentum with a visible recoil object, not a visible WIMP track. The mass makes pair production kinematically accessible, but the plot and integrated collider luminosity alone do not decide discovery probability.

For the relic estimate, define $M=m{c}^2$ and $\theta =k_{B}T$. The sharp-freeze-out relic dilution model givesAssume stable particles, no subsequent annihilation, and $RT=\mathrm{constant}$. Conserved comoving particle number then givesThe present rest-energy density and its critical fraction areThus the supplied toy model yields a cosmologically substantial density, of the right broad scale to motivate a dark-matter candidate. It is not an independent precision prediction: $P$ is imposed and the abundance depends exponentially on it. If entropy degrees of freedom change, entropy conservation instead gives an extra factor $g_{\ast s,0}/g_{\ast s,f}$ in $n_0$ when using the photon temperature. The species content needed to evaluate that correction is not supplied. A realistic calculation also follows residual annihilations with the abundance Boltzmann equation rather than stopping exactly at equilibrium freeze-out.

Collider luminosity is the proportionality factor between a process cross section and its interaction rate: $dN/dt=\mathcal{L}\sigma$ before efficiency corrections. It has units of inverse area per time. Integrated collider luminosity is ${\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{int}}=\int \mathcal{L}(t)dt$, with inverse-area units, and gives $N=\sigma {\mathcal{L}}_{\mathrm{int}}$ for a constant cross section and unit efficiency.

At an $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider, count small-angle Bhabha scattering in a dedicated forward detector. Its calculable quantum electrodynamics cross section in a precisely defined angular acceptance provides $\mathcal{L}=N/(ϵ\sigma \Delta t)$, after background and radiative corrections. The inner angular boundary is especially important because the rate is sharply forward-peaked.

At a collider with two proton beams, a van der Meer scan calibrates a visible interaction monitor by separating the beams horizontally and vertically while recording the overlap-dependent rate. Known bunch populations and the measured overlap give an absolute collider luminosity and hence the monitor's visible cross section. Its rate then tracks collider luminosity during normal running. Correlations between transverse coordinates require a nonfactorizing scan analysis rather than blindly multiplying two one-dimensional profiles.