IISER MOHALI

Abstract: The evidence of dark matter in the universe continues to intrigue theorists and experimentalists alike. While its nature is still not completely clear, a possibility is that it could have an elementary particle character. In this talk, I shall revisit the particle dark matter paradigm where scattering rates play a central role. In this connection, the impact of next-to-the-leading order corrections on such scattering rates shall be discussed in the context of a popular particle dark matter model. It will also be demonstrated that such precision effects can sizebly modify the theoretical prediction of the dark matter abundance in the universe. On another front, I shall also elucidate how particle dark matter models can give rise to detectable gravitational waves through cosmological phase transitions.