Scalar Rayleigh Dark Matter: current bounds and future prospects
Abstract
Dark Matter can interact with electroweak gauge bosons via higher-dimensional operators, in spite of being neutral under gauge interactions, much like neutral atoms interact with photons through Rayleigh scattering. This study explores effective interactions between a real scalar Dark Matter particle, singlet under the SM gauge group, and electroweak gauge bosons. We present a comprehensive analysis of current constraints and projected sensitivities from both lepton and hadron colliders as well as direct and indirect detection experiments in testing Rayleigh Dark Matter interactions. We find that, thanks to the complementarity between collider experiments and cosmological probes, thermally produced Rayleigh Dark Matter at the hundreds of GeV scale can be thoroughly tested with the next generation of experiments. For lighter candidates, upcoming forecasts will explore uncharted parameter space, significantly surpassing the thermal Dark Matter benchmark.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.09073,
title = {Scalar Rayleigh Dark Matter: current bounds and future prospects},
author = {Daniele Barducci and Dario Buttazzo and Alessandro Dondarini and Roberto Franceschini and Giulio Marino and Federico Mescia and Paolo Panci},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.09073},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
41 pages, 14 figures, matches published version