Title: Forbidden scalar dark matter and dark Higgses

Abstract

As experimental searches for WIMP dark matter continue to yield null results, models beyond the WIMP paradigm have proliferated in order to elude ever improving observational constraints, among them that of sub-GeV dark matter mediated by a massive vector portal (a dark photon) associated with a new dark U(1) gauge symmetry. It has been previously noted that for a significant range of the parameter space of this class of models, the annihilation of dark matter particles into a pair of dark photons can dominate the freeze-out process even when this process is kinematically forbidden for dark matter at rest — this is known as the “forbidden dark matter” (FDM) regime. Prior studies of this regime, however, assume that any “dark Higgs” associated with breaking the dark U(1) and imparting mass to the dark photon is decoupled from the dark matter and as such plays no role in the freeze-out process. In this paper, we explore the effects of a dark Higgs on sub-GeV dark matter phenomenology in this FDM regime by considering the simplest possible construction in which there exist non-trivial dark matter-dark Higgs couplings: a model with a single complex scalar DM candidate coupled directly to the dark Higgsmore » field. We find that for a wide range of parameter space, the dark Higgs can alter the resulting relic abundance by many orders of magnitude, and that this effect can remain significant even for a small dark matter-dark Higgs coupling constant. Considering measurements from direct detection and measurements of the CMB, we further find that points in this model’s parameter space which recreate the appropriate dark matter relic abundance suffer only mild constraints from other sources at present, but may become accessible in near-future direct detection experiments.« less

Authors:

Wojcik, George N. ^[1]; Rizzo, Thomas G. ^[2]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
2. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Publication Date:

Thu Apr 07 00:00:00 EDT 2022

Research Org.:

SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

OSTI Identifier:

1866571

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC02-76SF00515

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 2022; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479

Publisher:

Springer Nature

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; beyond standard model; cosmology of theories beyond the SM