Perturbative unitarity violation in radiative capture transitions to dark matter bound states

We investigate the formation of bound states of non-relativistic dark matter particles subject to long-range interactions through radiative capture. The initial scattering and final bound states are described by Coulomb potentials with different strengths, as relevant for non-abelian gauge interactions or theories featuring charged scalars. For bound states with generic quantum numbers n and ℓ, we provide closed-form expressions for the bound-state formation (BSF) cross sections of monopole, dipole and quadrupole transitions, and of arbitrary multipole order when ℓ = n – 1. This allows us to investigate in detail a strong enhancement of BSF that occurs for initial states in a repulsive potential. For ℓ = n – 1 ≫ 1, we show that the BSF cross section for each single bound state violates the perturbative unitarity bound in the vicinity of a certain critical initial velocity, and provide an interpretation in terms of a smooth matching of classical trajectories. When summing the BSF cross section over all possible bound states in the final state, this leads to a unitarity violation below a certain velocity, but within the validity range of the weakly coupled non-relativistic description. We identify an effectively strong interaction as the origin of this unitarity violation, which is caused by an “anomalously” large overlap of scattering and bound-state wave functions in Coulomb potentials of different strength.