Search results for "light dark matter"
showing 10 items of 41 documents
X-Ray Lines from Dark Matter Annihilation at the keV Scale.
2018
In 2014, several groups reported hints for a yet unidentified line in astrophysical x-ray signals from galaxies and galaxy clusters at an energy of 3.5 keV. While it is not unlikely that this line is simply a reflection of imperfectly modeled atomic transitions, it has renewed the community’s interest in models of keV-scale dark matter, whose decay would lead to such a line. The alternative possibility of dark matter annihilation into monochromatic photons is far less explored, a lapse that we strive to amend in this Letter. More precisely, we introduce a novel model of fermionic dark matter χ with O(keV) mass, annihilating to a scalar state ϕ which in turn decays to photons, for instance v…
Dark Matter Decay between Phase Transitions at the Weak Scale
2017
We propose a new alternative to the weakly interacting massive particle paradigm for dark matter. Rather than being determined by thermal freeze-out, the dark matter abundance in this scenario is set by dark matter decay, which is allowed for a limited amount of time just before the electroweak phase transition. More specifically, we consider fermionic singlet dark matter particles coupled weakly to a scalar mediator S_{3} and to auxiliary dark sector fields, charged under the standard model gauge groups. Dark matter freezes out while still relativistic, so its abundance is initially very large. As the Universe cools down, the scalar mediator develops a vacuum expectation value (VEV), which…
Shell-model study on event rates of lightest supersymmetric particles scattering offKr83andTe125
2016
We investigate the elastic and inelastic scattering of lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) dark matter off two possible target nuclei, $^{83}\mathrm{Kr}$ and $^{125}\mathrm{Te}$. For the nuclear-structure calculations, we employ the nuclear shell model using recently generated realistic interactions. We have condensed the nuclear-physics contribution to a set of nuclear-structure factors that are independent of the adopted supersymmetric (SUSY) model. Total event rates are then easily calculated by combining the nuclear-structure factors with SUSY parameters of choice. In particular, $^{125}\mathrm{Te}$ shows promise as a detector material with both the elastic and inelastic channels yie…
Review of dark photon searches
2016
Dark Photons are hypothetical extra-U(1) gauge bosons, which are motivated by a number of astrophysical anomalies as well as the presently seen deviation between the Standard Model prediction and the direct measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, (g − 2)μ . The Dark Photon does not serve as the Dark Matter particle itself, but acts as a messenger particle of a hypothetical Dark Sector with residual interaction to the Standard Model. We review recent Dark Photon searches, which were carried out in a global effort at various hadron and particle physics facilities. We also comment on the perspectives for future invisble searches, which directly probe the existence of Light Da…
Observational properties of feebly coupled dark matter
2016
We show that decoupled hidden sectors can have observational consequences. As a representative model example, we study dark matter production in the Higgs portal model with one real singlet scalar $s$ coupled to the Standard Model Higgs via $\lambda_{\rm hs}\Phi^\dagger\Phi s^2$ and demonstrate how the combination of non-observation of cosmological isocurvature perturbations and astrophysical limits on dark matter self-interactions imply stringent bounds on the magnitude of the scalar self-coupling $\lambda_{\rm s}s^4$. For example, for dark matter mass $m_{\rm s}=10$ MeV and Hubble scale during cosmic inflation $H_*=10^{12}$ GeV, we find $10^{-4}\lesssim \lambda_{\rm s}\lesssim 0.2$.
Radiative Seesaw Dark Matter
2021
The singlet majoron model of seesaw neutrino mass is appended by one dark Majorana fermion singlet $\chi$ with $L=2$ and one dark complex scalar singlet $\zeta$ with $L=1$. This simple setup allows $\chi$ to obtain a small radiative mass anchored by the same heavy right-handed neutrinos, whereas the one-loop decay of the standard-model Higgs boson to $\chi \chi + \bar{\chi} \bar{\chi}$ provides the freeze-in mechanism for $\chi$ to be the light dark matter of the Universe.
Self-interacting dark matter and cosmology of a light scalar mediator
2016
We consider a fermionic dark matter candidate interacting via a scalar mediator coupled with the Standard Model through a Higgs portal. We consider a general setting including both scalar and pseudoscalar interactions between the scalar and fermion, and illustrate the relevant features for dark matter abundance, direct search limits and collider constraints. The case where dark matter has a self-interaction strength $⟨{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{V}⟩/{m}_{\ensuremath{\psi}}\ensuremath{\sim}0.1--1\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}/\mathrm{g}$ is strongly constrained, in particular by the big bang nucleosynthesis. We show that these constraints can be alleviated by introducing a new light sterile ne…
Decaying warm dark matter and neutrino masses
2007
Neutrino masses may arise from spontaneous breaking of ungauged lepton number. Due to quantum gravity effects the associated Goldstone boson - the majoron - will pick up a mass. We determine the lifetime and mass required by cosmic microwave background observations so that the massive majoron provides the observed dark matter of the Universe. The majoron DDM scenario fits nicely in models where neutrino masses arise a la seesaw, and may lead to other possible cosmological implications.
Possibility of a dark matter interpretation for the excess in isotropic radio emission reported by ARCADE.
2011
The ARCADE 2 Collaboration has recently measured an isotropic radio emission which is significantly brighter than the expected contributions from known extra-galactic sources. The simplest explanation of such excess involves a ``new'' population of unresolved sources which become the most numerous at very low (observationally unreached) brightness. We investigate this scenario in terms of synchrotron radiation induced by weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) annihilations or decays in extra-galactic halos. Intriguingly, for light-mass WIMPs with a thermal annihilation cross section, the level of expected radio emission matches the ARCADE observations.
Neutrino probes of the nature of light dark matter
2011
Dark matter particles gravitationally trapped inside the Sun may annihilate into Standard Model particles, producing a flux of neutrinos. The prospects of detecting these neutrinos in future multi-\kton{} neutrino detectors designed for other physics searches are explored here. We study the capabilities of a 34/100 \kton{} liquid argon detector and a 100 \kton{} magnetized iron calorimeter detector. These detectors are expected to determine the energy and the direction of the incoming neutrino with unprecedented precision allowing for tests of the dark matter nature at very low dark matter masses, in the range of 5-50 GeV. By suppressing the atmospheric background with angular cuts, these t…