Nonabelian dark matter: models and constraints

TL;DR

This paper explores models of nonabelian dark matter with small mass splittings, identifying parameters that explain cosmic ray excesses while satisfying observational constraints, and predicts new signals such as excited state decays.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of SU(2) gauge symmetry-based dark matter models, deriving new constraints, and analyzing the phenomenology of excited states and their potential signals.

Findings

Preferred parameters: M_chi ~ 1 TeV, mu ~ 100 MeV, alpha_g ~ 0.04.

Decays of excited states could produce detectable gamma-ray signals.

Constraints from BBN and relic density shape the viable parameter space.

Abstract

Numerous experimental anomalies hint at the existence of a dark matter (DM) multiplet chi_i with small mass splittings. We survey the simplest such models which arise from DM in the low representations of a new SU(2) gauge symmetry, whose gauge bosons have a small mass mu < 1 GeV. We identify preferred parameters M_chi ~ 1 TeV, mu ~ 100 MeV, alpha_g ~ 0.04 and the chi chi -> 4e annihilation channel, for explaining PAMELA, Fermi, and INTEGRAL/SPI lepton excesses, while remaining consistent with constraints from relic density, diffuse gamma rays and the CMB. This consistency is strengthened if DM annihilations occur mainly in subhalos, while excitations (relevant to the excited DM proposal to explain the 511 keV excess) occur in the galactic center (GC), due to higher velocity dispersions in the GC, induced by baryons. We derive new constraints and predictions which are generic to these models. Notably, decays of excited DM states chi' -> chi gamma arise at one loop and could provide a new signal for INTEGRAL/SPI; big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraints on the density of dark SU(2) gauge bosons imply a lower bound on the mixing parameter epsilon between the SU(2) gauge bosons and photon. These considerations rule out the possibility of the gauge bosons that decay into e^+e^- being long-lived. We study in detail models of doublet, triplet and quintuplet DM, showing that both normal and inverted mass hierarchies can occur, with mass splittings that can be parametrically smaller, e.g., O(100) keV, than the generic MeV scale of splittings. A systematic treatment of Z_2 symmetry which insures the stability of the intermediate DM state is given for cases with inverted mass hierarchy, of interest for boosting the 511 keV signal from the excited dark matter mechanism.