Related papers: Continuum-Mediated Dark Matter-Baryon Scattering
Direct detection experiments have started to explore dark matter scattering off electrons and nucleons through light mediators. Mediators with sub-keV masses are efficiently produced in the Sun and can be absorbed in the same detectors that…
Dark matter may self-interact through a continuum of low-mass states. This happens if dark matter couples to a strongly-coupled nearly-conformal hidden sector. This type of theory is holographically described by brane-localized dark matter…
Traditional dark matter models, eg. WIMPs, assume dark matter is weakly coupled to the standard model so that elastic scattering between dark matter and baryons can be described perturbatively by Born approximation. Most direct detection…
So far, the observed effects of dark matter are compatible with it having purely gravitational interactions. However, in many models, dark matter has additional interactions with itself, with the Standard Model, and/or with additional…
It is often said that asymmetric dark matter is light compared to typical weakly interacting massive particles. Here we point out a simple scheme with a neutrino portal and $\mathcal{O}(60 \text{ GeV})$ asymmetric dark matter which may be…
We systematically study models with light scalar and pseudoscalar dark matter candidates and their potential signals at the LHC. First, we derive cosmological bounds on models with the Standard Model Higgs mediator and with a new weak-scale…
We study self-interacting dark matter coupled to the Standard Model via the Higgs portal. We consider a scenario where dark matter is a thermal relic with strong enough self interactions that can alleviate the problems of collisionless cold…
We develop a general framework for the computation of light portal dark matter direct detection, incorporating a consistent treatment of finite momentum transfer. In this framework, dark matter interacts with Standard Model matter through a…
The primary observable in dark matter direct detection is the spectrum of scattering events. We simulate multiple positive direct detection signals (on germanium, xenon, and argon targets) to explore the extent to which the underlying…
In an extended effective operator framework, we investigate in detail the effects of light mediators on the event spectra of dark matter (DM)-nucleus scatterings. The presence of light mediators changes the interpretation of the current…
We consider scenarios where Dark Matter (DM) particles carry baryon and/or lepton numbers, which can be defined if there exist operators connecting the dark to the visible sector. As a result, the DM fields become intimately linked to the…
Direct detection of dark matter (DM) requires an interaction of dark matter particles with nucleons. The same interaction can lead to dark matter pair production at a hadron collider, and with the addition of initial state radiation this…
Dark matter self-interactions can affect the small scale structure of the Universe, reducing the central densities of dwarfs and low surface brightness galaxies in accord with observations. From a particle physics point of view, this points…
We study direct detection in simplified models of Dark Matter (DM) in which interactions with Standard Model (SM) fermions are mediated by a heavy vector boson. We consider fully general, gauge-invariant couplings between the SM, the…
Light vector mediators can naturally induce velocity-dependent dark matter self-interactions while at the same time allowing for the correct dark matter relic abundance via thermal freeze-out. If these mediators subsequently decay into…
We consider the possibility that dark energy and baryons might scatter off each other. The type of interaction we consider leads to a pure momentum exchange, and does not affect the background evolution of the expansion history. We…
We present an effective field theory describing the relevant interactions of the Standard Model with an electrically neutral particle that can account for the dark matter in the Universe. The possible mediators of these interactions are…
Dark matter and neutrinos provide the two most compelling pieces of evidence for new physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics but they are often treated as two different sectors. The aim of this paper is to determine whether…
The light mediator scenario of self-interacting dark matter is strongly constrained in many ways. After summarizing the various constraints, we discuss minimal options and models which allow to nevertheless satisfy all these constraints.…
Conventional approaches to describe dark matter phenomenology at collider and (in)direct detection experiments in the form of dark matter effective field theory or simplified models suffer in general from drawbacks regarding validity at…