Thermal Dark Matter Candidate Research Articles

The domain of a cannibal dark matter

We consider a scenario in which the dark matter is alone in a hidden sector and consists of a real scalar particle with a manifest or spontaneously broken ℤ2 symmetry, at a temperature which differs from the one of the visible sector, T' ≠ T. While similar models with general couplings have already been studied in the literature, the special case of a model with spontaneous symmetry breaking constitutes a non-trivial limit of these results, since it features vanishing tree-level amplitudes for the processes k → 2 with k > 2 at threshold, thus making the cross-section governing dark-matter freeze-out velocity suppressed. We carefully determine the thermally averaged dark-matter annihilation cross-section in this scenario, including the possible effects of one-loop corrections and Bose-Einstein statistics, while also reporting our results in the domain of thermal dark matter candidates, T' fo/T vs. m DM with T' fo being the hidden-sector temperature at decoupling. We show that for fixed quartic coupling, due to entropy conservation, the thermal candidates lie along a curve T'/T ∝ m DM -1/3(1+κ) with anomalous scaling κ ∼ 𝒪(T' fo/m DM) > 0. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this scaling is valid for a broad class of cannibal DM scenarios, with or without symmetry breaking. In addition, we also discuss the relevant cosmological and astrophysical constraints.

Fermionic dark matter in Dynamical Scotogenic Model

In the Dynamical Scotogenic Model, the global B − L symmetry is supposed to be broken spontaneously resulting in a massless Goldstone boson called majoron, and massive right handed neutrinos which participate in the generation of light neutrino massses at one-loop. One of them being the lightest stable particle can be a thermal dark matter candidate. We discuss how the dark matter phenomenology differs from the original Scotogenic model, taking into account all the constraints coming from the observed neutrino masses and mixing, lepton flavor violations such as μ → eγ, μ → eJ, astrophysical and cosmological observations of stellar cooling and Neff, as well as collider signatures such as Higgs invisible decays. We find that the dark matter annihilation to majorons plays an important role to produce the right relic abundance.

Thermal Dark Matter from Freeze-Out of Inverse Decays.

We propose a new thermal dark matter candidate whose abundance is determined by the freeze-out of inverse decays. The relic abundance depends parametrically only on a decay width, while matching the observed value requires that the coupling determining the width-and the width itself-should be exponentially small. The dark matter is therefore very weakly coupled to the standard model, evading conventional searches. This inverse decay dark matter can be discovered by searching for the long-lived particle that decays into the dark matter at future planned experiments.

Formula omitted] for light dark matter, gμ − 2, the 511 keV excess and the Hubble tension

In this paper we introduce a light Dirac particle ψ as thermal dark matter candidate in a U(1)Lμ−Lτ model. Together with the new gauge boson X, we find a possible parameter space with mX≃20 MeV, U(1)Lμ−Lτ coupling gX≃5⋅10−4 and mψ≳mX/2 where the (g−2)μ anomaly, dark matter, the Hubble tension, and (part of) the excess of 511 keV photons from the region near the galactic center can be explained simultaneously. This model is safe from current experimental and astrophysical constraints, but can be probed by the next generation of neutrino experiments as well as low–energy e+e− colliders.

Domain of thermal dark matter candidates

We consider, in general terms, the possible parameter space of thermal dark matter candidates. We assume that the dark matter particle is fundamental and was in thermal equilibrium in a hidden sector with a temperature $T'$, which may differ from that of the Standard Model temperature, $T$. The candidates lie in a region in the $T'/T$ vs. $m_{\rm dm}$ plane, which is bounded by both model-independent theoretical considerations and observational constraints. The former consists of limits from dark matter candidates that decoupled when relativistic (the relativistic floor) and from those that decoupled when non-relativistic with the largest annihilation cross section allowed by unitarity (the unitarity wall), while the latter concerns big bang nucleosynthesis ($N_{\rm eff}$ ceiling) and free streaming. We present three simplified dark matter scenarios, demonstrating concretely how each fits into the domain.

Muon g-2 and B Anomalies from Dark Matter.

In light of the recent result of the muon g-2 experiment and the update on the test of lepton flavor universality R_{K} published by the LHCb Collaboration, we systematically study for the first time a set of models with minimal field content that can simultaneously give (i)a thermal dark matter candidate; (ii)large loop contributions to b→sℓℓ processes able to address R_{K} and the other B anomalies; (iii)a natural solution to the muon g-2 discrepancy through chirally enhanced contributions. Moreover, this type of model with heavy particles and chiral enhancement can evade the strong limits from direct searches but can be tested at present and future colliders and direct-detection searches.

Dark Photon and Muon g-2 Inspired Inelastic Dark Matter Models at the High-Energy Intensity Frontier.

We study hidden-sector particles at past (CERN-Hamburg-Amsterdam-Rome-Moscow Collaboration and NuCal), present (NA62, SeaQuest, and DarkQuest), and future (LongQuest) experiments at the high-energy intensity frontier. We focus on exploring the minimal vector portal and the next-to-minimal models in which the productions and decays are decoupled. These next-to-minimal models have mostly been devised to explain experimental anomalies while avoiding existing constraints. We demonstrate that proton fixed-target experiments provide one of the most powerful probes for the MeV to few GeV mass range of these models, using inelastic dark matter (iDM) as an example. We consider an iDM model with a small mass splitting that yields the observed dark matter relic abundance, and a scenario with a sizable mass splitting that can also explain the muon g-2 anomaly. We set strong limits based on the CERN-Hamburg-Amsterdam-Rome-Moscow Collaboration and NuCal experiments, which come close to excluding iDM as a full-abundance thermal dark matter candidate in the MeV to GeV mass range. We also make projections based on NA62, SeaQuest, and DarkQuest and update the constraints of the minimal dark photon parameter space. We find that NuCal sets the only existing constraint in ε∼10^{-8}-10^{-4} regime, reaching ∼800 MeV in dark photon mass due to the resonant enhancement of proton bremsstrahlung production. These studies also motivate LongQuest, a three-stage retooling of the SeaQuest experiment with short (≲5 m), medium (∼5 m), and long (≳35 m) baseline tracking stations and detectors as a multipurpose machine to explore new physics.

Cherenkov Telescope Array sensitivity to branon dark matter models

In the absence of a clear hint of dark matter (DM) signals in the GeV regime so far, heavy, \U0001d4aa(TeV) DM candidates are gradually earning more and more attention within the community. Among others, extra-dimensional brane-world models may produce thermal DM candidates with masses up to 100 TeV . These heavy DM candidates could be detected with the next generation of very-high-energy gamma-ray observatories such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) . In this work, we study the sensitivity of CTA to branon DM via the observation of representative astrophysical DM targets, namely dwarf spheroidal galaxies. In particular, we focus on Draco and Sculptor, two well-known dwarfs visible from the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively. For each of these targets, we simulated 300 h of CTA observations and studied the sensitivity of both CTA-North and CTA-South to branon annihilations using the latest publicly available instrument response functions and most recent analysis tools. We computed annihilation cross section values needed to reach a 5σ detection as a function of the branon mass. Additionally, in the absence of a predicted DM signal, we obtained 2σ upper limits on the annihilation cross section. These limits lie 1.5–2 orders of magnitude above the thermal relic cross section value, depending on the considered branon mass. Yet, CTA will allow to exclude a significant portion of the brane tension-mass parameter space in the 0.1–60 TeV branon mass range, and up to tensions of ∼ 10 TeV . More importantly, CTA will significantly enlarge the region already excluded by AMS and CMS, and will provide valuable complementary information to future SKA radio observations. We conclude that CTA will possess potential to constrain brane-world models and, more in general, TeV DM candidates.

Future Circular Colliders

After 10 years of physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle physics landscape has greatly evolved. Today, a staged Future Circular Collider (FCC), consisting of a luminosity-frontier highest-energy electron–positron collider (FCC-ee) followed by an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), promises the most far-reaching physics program for the post-LHC era. FCC-ee will be a precision instrument used to study the Z, W, Higgs, and top particles, and will offer unprecedented sensitivity to signs of new physics. Most of the FCC-ee infrastructure could be reused for FCC-hh, which will provide proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 100 TeV and could directly produce new particles with masses of up to several tens of TeV. This collider will also measure the Higgs self-coupling and explore the dynamics of electroweak symmetry breaking. Thermal dark matter candidates will be either discovered or conclusively ruled out by FCC-hh. Heavy-ion and electron–proton collisions (FCC-eh) will further contribute to the breadth of the overall FCC program. The integrated FCC infrastructure will serve the particle physics community through the end of the twenty-first century. This review combines key contents from the first three volumes of the FCC Conceptual Design Report.

Flavoured gauge extension of singlet-doublet fermionic dark matter: neutrino mass, high scale validity and collider signatures

We propose an Abelian gauged version of the singlet-doublet fermionic dark matter (DM) model where the DM, combination of a vector like fermion doublet and a fermion singlet, is naturally stabilised by the gauge symmetry without requiring any ad-hoc discrete symmetries. In order to have an enlarged parameter space for the DM, accsessible at collider experiments like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), we consider the additional gauge symmetry to be based on the quantum B − 3Lτ. The restriction to third generation of leptons is chosen in order to have weaker bounds from the LHC on the corresponding gauge boson. The triangle anomalies arising in this model can be cancelled by the inclusion of a right handed neutrino which also takes part in generating light neutrino masses through type I seesaw mechanism. The model thus offers a potential thermal DM candidate, interesting collider signatures and correct neutrino mass along with a stable electroweak vacuum and perturbative couplings all the way up to the Planck scale. We constrain our model parameters from these requirements as well as existing relevant constraints related to DM and colliders.

A very heavy sneutrino as viable thermal dark matter candidate in U(1)\u2032 extensions of the MSSM

We study the Standard Model singlet (“right-handed”) sneutrino {tilde{nu}}_R dark matter in a class of U(1)′ extensions of the MSSM that originate from the breaking of the E6 gauge group. These models, which are referred to as UMSSM, contain three right-handed neutrino superfields plus an extra gauge boson Z′ and an additional SM singlet Higgs with mass ≃ MZ′, together with their superpartners. In the UMSSM the right sneutrino is charged under the extra U(1)′ gauge symmetry; it can therefore annihilate via gauge interactions. In particular, for {M}_{{tilde{nu}}_R}simeq {M}_{Zprime }/2 the sneutrinos can annihilate by the exchange of (nearly) on-shell gauge or Higgs bosons. We focus on this region of parameter space. For some charge assignment we find viable thermal {tilde{nu}}_R dark matter for mass up to ∼ 43 TeV. This is the highest mass of a good thermal dark matter candidate in standard cosmology that has so far been found in an explicit model. Our result can also be applied to other models of spin−0 dark matter candidates annihilating through the resonant exchange of a scalar particle. These models cannot be tested at the LHC, nor in present or near-future direct detection experiments, but could lead to visible indirect detection signals in future Cherenkov telescopes.

Electroweak multiplet dark matter at future lepton colliders

An electroweak multiplet stable due to a new global symmetry is a simple and well-motivated candidate for thermal dark matter. We study how direct searches at a future linear collider, such as the proposed CLIC, can constrain scalar and fermion triplets, quintets and septets, as well as a fermion doublet. The phenomenology is highly sensitive to charged state lifetimes and thus the mass splitting between the members of the multiplet. We include both radiative corrections and the effect of non-renormalisable operators on this splitting. In order to explore the full range of charged state lifetimes, we consider signals including long-lived charged particles, disappearing tracks, and monophotons. By combining the different searches we find discovery and exclusion contours in the mass-lifetime plane. In particular, when the mass splitting is generated purely through radiative corrections, we can exclude the pure-Higgsino doublet below 310 GeV, the pure-wino triplet below 775 GeV, and the minimal dark matter fermion quintet below 1025 GeV. The scenario where the thermal relic abundance of a Higgsino accounts for the whole dark matter of the Universe can be excluded if the mass splitting between the charged and neutral states is less than 230 MeV. Finally, we discuss possible improvements to these limits by using associated hard leptons to idenify the soft visible decay products of the charged members of the dark matter multiplet.

The dispirited case of gauged U(1)B \u2212 L dark matter

We explore the constraints and phenomenology of possibly the simplest scenario that could account at the same time for the active neutrino masses and the dark matter in the Universe within a gauged U(1)B − L symmetry, namely right-handed neutrino dark matter. We find that null searches from lepton and hadron colliders require dark matter with a mass below 900 GeV to annihilate through a resonance. Additionally, the very strong constraints from high-energy dilepton searches fully exclude the model for 150 GeV < {m}_{Z^{prime }} < 3 TeV. We further explore the phenomenology in the high mass region (i.e. masses ≳ mathcal{O} (1) TeV) and highlight theoretical arguments, related to the appearance of a Landau pole or an instability of the scalar potential, disfavoring large portions of this parameter space. Collectively, these considerations illustrate that a minimal extension of the Standard Model via a local U(1)B − L symmetry with a viable thermal dark matter candidate is difficult to achieve without fine-tuning. We conclude by discussing possible extensions of the model that relieve tension with collider constraints by reducing the gauge coupling required to produce the correct relic abundance.

Core formation from self-heating dark matter

Cosmological simulations of the ΛCDM model suggest that the dark matter halos of dwarf galaxies are denser in their center than what observational data of such galaxies imply. In this letter, we propose a novel solution to this problem by invoking a certain class of dark matter self-heating processes. As we will argue, such processes lead to the formation of dark matter cores at late times by considerably reducing the inner mass density of dwarf-sized halos. For deriving concrete results, we focus on semi-annihilating dark matter scenarios and model the inner region of dark matter halos as a gravothermal fluid. An important aspect of this new solution is that the semi-annihilation effects are much more prominent in dwarf-sized halos than in the more massive halos that host galaxies and clusters, even if the corresponding cross sections are the same. Furthermore, the preferred parameter space for solving the small-scale problem suggests a thermal dark matter candidate with a mass below the GeV scale, which can be probed in dark matter direct and indirect detection experiments.

A clockwork WIMP

We embed a thermal dark matter (DM) candidate within the clockwork framework. This mechanism allows to stabilize the DM particle over cosmological time because it suppresses its decay into Standard Model (SM) particles. At the same time, pair annihilations are unsuppressed, so that the relic density is set by the usual freeze-out of the DM particle from the thermal bath. The slow decay of the DM candidate is induced by “clockwork” particles that can be quite light (rather than at some GUT or Planck scale) and could be searched for at current or future colliders. According to the scenario considered, the very same particles also mediate the annihilation process, thus providing a connection between DM annihilation and DM decay, and fixing the mass scale of the clockwork states, otherwise unconstrained, to be in the TeV range or lighter. We then show how this setup can minimally emerge from the deconstruction of an extra dimension in flat spacetime. Finally, we argue that the clockwork mechanism that we consider could induce Majorana neutrino masses, with a seesaw scale of order TeV or less and Yukawa couplings of order unity.

The fraternal WIMP miracle

We identify and analyze thermal dark matter candidates in the fraternal twin Higgs model and its generalizations. The relic abundance of fraternal twin dark matter is set by twin weak interactions, with a scale tightly tied to the weak scale of the Standard Model by naturalness considerations. As such, the dark matter candidates benefit from a ``fraternal WIMP miracle'', reproducing the observed dark matter abundance for dark matter masses between 50 and 150 GeV . However, the couplings dominantly responsible for dark matter annihilation do not lead to interactions with the visible sector. The direct detection rate is instead set via fermionic Higgs portal interactions, which are likewise constrained by naturalness considerations but parametrically weaker than those leading to dark matter annihilation. The predicted direct detection cross section is close to current LUX bounds and presents an opportunity for the next generation of direct detection experiments.

On the sensitivity of CTA to gamma-ray boxes from multi-TeV dark matter

Collider, direct and indirect searches for dark matter have typically little or no sensitivity to weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with masses above a few TeV. This rather unexplored regime can however be probed through the search for distinctive gamma-ray spectral features produced by the annihilation of WIMPs at very high energies. Here we present a dedicated search for gamma-ray boxes—sharp spectral features that cannot be mimicked by astrophysical sources—with the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Using realistic projections for the instrument performance and detailed background modelling, a profile likelihood analysis is implemented to derive the expected upper limits and sensitivity reach after 100 h of observations towards a 2°×2° region around the Galactic centre. Our results show that CTA will be able to probe gamma-ray boxes down to annihilation cross sections of 10−27−10−26 cm3/s up to tens of TeV. We also identify a number of concrete particle physics models providing thermal dark matter candidates that can be used as target benchmarks in future search campaigns. This constitutes a golden opportunity for CTA to either discover or rule out multi-TeV thermal dark matter in a corner of parameter space where all other experimental efforts are basically insensitive.

Phenomenological constraints on light mixed sneutrino dark matter scenarios

In supersymmetric models with Dirac neutrinos, the lightest sneutrino can be a good thermal dark matter candidate when the soft sneutrino trilinear parameter is large. In this paper, we focus on scenarios where the mass of the mixed sneutrino LSP is of the order of GeV so the sneutrino dark matter is still viable complying with the limits by current and near future direct detection experiments. We investigate phenomenological constraints in the parameter space of the models, as well as the vacuum stability bound. Finally, we show that the allowed regions can be explored by measuring Higgs boson properties at future collider experiments.

Prospects for annihilating dark matter in the inner galactic halo by the Cherenkov Telescope Array

We compute the sensitivity to dark matter annihilations for the forthcoming large Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in several primary channels and over a range of dark matter masses from 50 GeV up to 80 TeV. For all channels, we include inverse Compton scattering of ${e}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ by dark matter annihilations on the ambient photon background, which yields substantial contributions to the overall $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-ray flux. We improve the analysis over previous work by: (i) implementing a spectral and morphological analysis of the $\ensuremath{\gamma}$-ray emission; (ii) taking into account the most up-to-date cosmic ray background obtained from a full CTA Monte Carlo simulation and a description of the diffuse astrophysical emission; and (iii) including the systematic uncertainties in the rich observational CTA data sets. We find that our spectral and morphological analysis improves the CTA sensitivity by roughly a factor 2. For the hadronic channels, CTA will be able to probe thermal dark matter candidates over a broad range of masses if the systematic uncertainties in the data sets will be controlled better than the percent level. For the leptonic modes, the CTA sensitivity will be well below the thermal value of the annihilation cross-section. In this case, even with larger systematics, thermal dark matter candidates up to masses of a few TeV will be easily studied.

Lepton-flavor violating signatures in supersymmetric U(1)′ seesaw

In a supersymmetric U(1)′ seesaw model, a right-handed sneutrino can be a good thermal dark matter candidate if the extra gaugino [Formula: see text] is light enough to provide an appropriate annihilation cross-section through a t-channel diagram. We first discuss how right thermal relic density of the right-handed sneutrino dark matter can arise and then explore lepton number and flavor violating signatures followed by cascade production of [Formula: see text] from the third generation squarks at the LHC.