This seminar presents a comprehensive analysis of thermal relic freezeout mechanisms, deriving simple-to-use analytical relationships between dark matter mass and coupling strengths that explain the observed cosmic abundance. This unified framework reveals a generalized perturbative unitarity bound on dark matter mass applicable across the full spectrum of thermal freezeout processes.
Notably, I will demonstrate how thermal dark matter masses can exceed the conventional 100 TeV unitarity limit—potentially reaching the Planck scale—through mechanisms involving nearly degenerate states and metastable dark matter configurations. Specifically, I will introduce new concepts like zombie and drunk dark matter to enable the realization of superheavy thermal dark matter. Finally, I will show that weak-scale thermal dark matter can naturally arise even in scenarios with extremely small coupling strengths.