Cosmology and astrophysics of minimal dark matter Original Research Article

We consider DM that only couples to SM gauge bosons and fills one gauge multiplet, e.g., a fermion 5-plet (which is automatically stable), or a wino-like 3-plet. We revisit the computation of the cosmological relic abundance including non-perturbative corrections. The predicted mass of, e.g., the 5-plet increases from 4.4 to 10 TeV, and indirect detection rates are enhanced by 2 orders of magnitude. Next, we show that due to the quasi-degeneracy among neutral and charged components of the DM multiplet, a significant fraction of DM with energy image (possibly present among ultra-high energy cosmic rays) can cross the Earth exiting in the charged state and may in principle be detected in neutrino telescopes.