In the specified dust model , so and . Photons and the six neutrino/antineutrino helicity states give
Using the supplied GeV estimates literally gives
The rounded time/temperature conversions are unusually crude: converting Gyr to and K to GeV instead gives . Either set gives the same order-of-magnitude mass conclusion below, but the numerical abundance should identify which supplied units are used.
For a stable relic, the relevant comparison is energy density, not merely particle number. The matter density left over after the baryons is at most nine times the baryon density here. Consequently
Put and use with . The condition becomes
For the literal supplied numbers the right side is about , giving and – GeV. With the physically consistent conversions the estimate is about GeV. The intended rough conclusion is therefore a sufficiently suppressed branch with no larger than order GeV, within the toy cosmological particle freeze-out law. Comparing the two number yields alone gives a similar rough scale but misses the mass weighting. This is a thermal relic density bound for a tunable fermion.
For , relativistic decoupling would instead leave , incompatible with the matter-density bound for such heavy stable particles. These are conditional bounds on a populated, stable thermal relic. A short lifetime or an initially suppressed nonthermal population can change the conclusion; the supplied information alone does not constrain every possible production and decay history.
Above the transition,
for . The ratio increases during cooling, rather than at higher temperature. A GUT transition at – GeV occurs well above this scale, so the interaction is too slow to establish or maintain thermal equilibrium throughout . In fact its integrated interaction probability from an arbitrarily high temperature down to is at most of order , since .
An initial Fermi-Dirac distribution with zero chemical potential therefore cannot be assumed from this high-temperature rate alone. If imposed initially and collisionlessly redshifted while the particles are massless, its thermal-looking form can persist, but this is not dynamically maintained thermal equilibrium. Other initial states can remain nonthermal. This is the thermalization temperature for a massless gauge mediator.
The below-transition rate stipulated in the model has . If and it includes efficient number-changing reactions, it can restore chemical equilibrium after the transition and erase the initial-state memory, making the estimates in a and b applicable. If it only equilibrates momenta, or if reheating never populates the relevant range, the thermal relic calculation must be reconsidered.
Thermal relic 2026-10-14
A thermal relic is a surviving particle population whose earlier abundance was set by chemical thermal equilibrium with the cosmic plasma. After number-changing reactions cease and cosmic entropy is conserved, its comoving abundance is described by the yield . A relativistically decoupled species can retain an appreciable yield, whereas a species remaining in thermal equilibrium after becoming nonrelativistic is subject to Boltzmann suppression. Its later mass density, lifetime and momentum distribution determine its cosmological effects.
For a stable nonrelativistic thermal relic, compare energy densities rather than number densities. If and , its density relative to baryons is . Requiring this ratio below an allowed dark-matter-to-baryon ratio means . With fixed rate parameters this excludes the weakly interacting large-mass branch, while the sufficiently Boltzmann-suppressed smaller-mass branch can satisfy the density bound. Decay or a nonthermal initial abundance requires a different constraint.