The phenomenology of lepton flavored dark matter

Abstract

In Flavored Dark Matter theories the dark matter particle carries flavor quantum numbers, and has renormalizable contact interactions with the Standard Model fields. The phenomenology of this scenario depends sensitively on whether dark matter carries lepton flavor, quark flavor or its own internal flavor quantum numbers. For the lepton flavored case, we investigate the implications for direct detection experiments and collider signatures. We show that the region of parameter space which leads to the right abundance for a thermal relic is in general within reach of current direct detection experiments. Focusing on a class of models where dark matter carries tau flavor, we show that in a significant part of parameter space these theories can be discovered above Standard Model backgrounds at the Large Hadron Collider. We also study the extent to which flavor and charge correlations among the final state leptons allows models of this type to be distinguished from theories where dark matter couples to leptons but does not carry flavor.