English

Dark matter scenarios with multiple spin-2 fields

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-02-22 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We study ghost-free multimetric theories for (N+1)(N+1) tensor fields with a coupling to matter and maximal global symmetry group SN×(Z2)NS_N\times(Z_2)^N. Their mass spectra contain a massless mode, the graviton, and NN massive spin-2 modes. One of the massive modes is distinct by being the heaviest, the remaining (N1)(N-1) massive modes are simply identical copies of each other. All relevant physics can therefore be understood from the case N=2N=2. Focussing on this case, we compute the full perturbative action up to cubic order and derive several features that hold to all orders in perturbation theory. The lighter massive mode does not couple to matter and neither of the massive modes decay into massless gravitons. We propose the lighter massive particle as a candidate for dark matter and investigate its phenomenology in the parameter region where the matter coupling is dominated by the massless graviton. The relic density of massive spin-2 can originate from a freeze-in mechanism or from gravitational particle production, giving rise to two different dark matter scenarios. The allowed parameter regions are very different from those in scenarios with only one massive spin-2 field and more accessible to experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.05128,
  title  = {Dark matter scenarios with multiple spin-2 fields},
  author = {N. L. Gonzalez Albornoz and Angnis Schmidt-May and Mikael von Strauss},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.05128},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

30 pages, 4 figures; comments of referee implemented, matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:44:08.278Z