The minimal model of nonbaryonic dark matter: A singlet scalar

By C. P. Burgess, M. Pospelov, T. Veldhuis. 2000

868 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We propose the simplest possible renormalizable extension of the Standard Model—the addition of just one singlet scalar field—as a minimalist model for nonbaryonic dark matter. Such a model is characterized by only three parameters in addition to those already appearing within the Standard Model: a dimensionless self-coupling and a mass for the new scalar, and a dimensionless coupling, λ , to the Higgs field. If the singlet is the dark matter, these parameters are related to one another by the cosmological abundance constraint, implying that the coupling of the singlet to the Higgs field is large, λ ∼O(0.1–1). Since this parameter also controls couplings to ordinary matter, we obtain predictions for the elastic cross section of the singlet with nuclei. The resulting scattering rates are close to current limits from both direct and indirect searches. The existence of the singlet also has implications for current Higgs searches, as it gives a large contribution to the invisible Higgs width for much of parameter space. These scalars can be strongly self-coupled in the cosmologically interesting sense recently proposed by Spergel and Steinhardt, but only for very low masses (≲1 GeV), which is possible only at the expense of some fine-tuning of parameters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ab8a84dd0d08f9c4bdb4cbc7b892e3430c1069fc

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Citations in the corpus

Building and testing models with extended Higgs sectors (2017, background): “They are inert by construction, and if, in addition, their interaction with the SM Higgs fields is protected by a conserved global symmetry, they will remain stable against decay [110, 350, 351].”
DarkSUSY 6: an advanced tool to compute dark matter properties numerically (2018, methodology): “As an example for an actual particle physics model other than supersymmetry, DarkSUSY 6 furthermore includes a module silveira zee which implements the DM candidate originally proposed by Silveira and Zee [40] and which now is often referred to as Scalar Singlet DM [25, 41, 42].”
Beyond the Standard Model Physics at the HL-LHC and HE-LHC (2018, background): “The scalar Higgs portal models consider a SM singlet scalar DM (S) which has interactions with the SM Higgs doublet (H) as [261, 262] SS⇤HH†, which is a four-dimensional operator.”
Vacuum stability, perturbativity, and scalar singlet dark matter (2009, background): “The singlet relic density is inversely proportional to the annihilation cross section which itself is proportional to a(2)2 [2, 5, 6]; thus, the maximum value of a2 allowed by vacuum stability gives a minimum relic density for the singlet.”
Status of invisible Higgs decays (2013, neutral): “[27–32].”
Reconstructing Higgs boson properties from the LHC and Tevatron data (2012, methodology): “Let us consider, for example, the simplest DM model obtained adding to the SM a real singlet scalar field S coupled to the Higgs doublet H by the −λS2|H|2 Lagrangian term [123, 124].”