English

A 3.55 keV Line from Exciting Dark Matter without a Hidden Sector

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-04-29 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Models in which dark matter particles can scatter into a slightly heavier state which promptly decays to the lighter state and a photon (known as eXciting Dark Matter, or XDM) have been shown to be capable of generating the 3.55 keV line observed from galaxy clusters, while suppressing the flux of such a line from smaller halos, including dwarf galaxies. In most of the XDM models discussed in the literature, this up-scattering is mediated by a new light particle, and dark matter annihilations proceed into pairs of this same light state. In these models, the dark matter and mediator effectively reside within a hidden sector, without sizable couplings to the Standard Model. In this paper, we explore a model of XDM that does not include a hidden sector. Instead, the dark matter both up-scatters and annihilates through the near resonant exchange of a O(102)\mathcal{O}(10^2) GeV pseudoscalar with large Yukawa couplings to the dark matter and smaller, but non-neglibile, couplings to Standard Model fermions. The dark matter and the mediator are each mixtures of Standard Model singlets and SU(2)WSU(2)_W doublets. We identify parameter space in which this model can simultaneously generate the 3.55 keV line and the gamma-ray excess observed from the Galactic Center, without conflicting with constraints from colliders, direct detection experiments, or observations of dwarf galaxies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1501.03496,
  title  = {A 3.55 keV Line from Exciting Dark Matter without a Hidden Sector},
  author = {Asher Berlin and Anthony DiFranzo and Dan Hooper},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.03496},
  year   = {2015}
}