Secluded WIMP Dark Matter

By M. Pospelov, A. Ritz, M. Voloshin. 2007

1,045 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We consider a generic mechanism via which thermal relic WIMP dark matter may be decoupled from the Standard Model, namely through a combination of WIMP annihilation to metastable mediators with subsequent delayed decay to Standard Model states. We illustrate this with explicit examples of WIMPs connected to the Standard Model by metastable bosons or fermions. In all models, provided the WIMP mass is greater than that of the mediator, it can be secluded from the Standard Model with an extremely small elastic scattering cross-section on nuclei and rate for direct collider production. In contrast, indirect signatures from WIMP annihilation are consistent with a weak scale cross-section and provide potentially observable γ-ray signals. We also point out that γ-ray constraints and flavor physics impose severe restrictions on MeV-scale variants of secluded models, and identify limited classes that pass all the observational constraints.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21b035dc6cfe1f47d9c80c559e44a64898d33d27

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Citations in the corpus

Vector Dark Matter from Inflationary Fluctuations (2015, background): “[31] M.”
Cosmological Simulations with Self-Interacting Dark Matter I: Constant Density Cores and Substructure (2012, background): “Dark matter particles with appreciable self-interactionshave been discussed in the literature for more than two decades (Carlson et al. 1992; Machacek et al. 1993; de Laix et al. 1995; Spergel & Steinhardt 2000; Firmani et al. 2000), and are now recognized as generic consequences of hidden-sector ex”
On possible interpretations of the high energy electron–positron spectrum measured by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (2009, background): “…pseudo-scalar or vector particles φ, subsequently decaying into light fermion (and possibly only e±) pairs (see e.g. Finkbeiner and Weiner 2007 [56], Pospelov et al. 2008 [57] and ArkaniHamed et al. 2008 [21]), produce a different spectrum from the monochromatic e± injection we consider here.”
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Gamma-ray spectroscopy of Positron Annihilation in the Milky Way (2015, background): “…because light dark matter particles may also be a candidate source of positrons (Boehm et al. 2004; Gunion et al. 2006; Hooper et al. 2004; Picciotto & Pospelov 2005; Pospelov et al. 2008), and dwarf galaxies are believed to be dark matter dominated (e.g. Simon & Geha 2007; Strigari et al. 2008).”
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