Cosmology and Astrophysics of Minimal Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper revisits minimal dark matter models, updating relic abundance calculations with non-perturbative effects, and explores potential detection of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in neutrino telescopes.

Contribution

It provides revised mass predictions for minimal dark matter candidates and proposes a novel detection method via charged states in ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

Findings

Predicted mass of fermion 5-plet increases from 4.4 TeV to 10 TeV.

Indirect detection rates are enhanced by 100 times.

Potential for detecting charged dark matter components in neutrino telescopes.

Abstract

We consider DM that only couples to SM gauge bosons and fills one gauge multiplet, e.g. a fermion 5-plet (which is automatically stable), or a wino-like 3-plet. We revisit the computation of the cosmological relic abundance including non-perturbative corrections. The predicted mass of e.g. the 5-plet increases from 4.4 TeV to 10 TeV, and indirect detection rates are enhanced by 2 orders of magnitude. Next, we show that due to the quasi-degeneracy among neutral and charged components of the DM multiplet, a significant fraction of DM with energy E > 10^17 eV (possibly present among ultra-high energy cosmic rays) can cross the Earth exiting in the charged state and may in principle be detected in neutrino telescopes.