Quirky Composite Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper introduces quirky dark matter, a novel scalar baryonic bound state from a new strong force, with unique detection signatures including gamma-ray lines and collider signals dominated by quirky mesons.

Contribution

It proposes a new dark matter candidate called quirky dark matter, involving chiral quirks and a new strong force, with distinctive detection and production features.

Findings

Dark matter abundance linked to baryon asymmetry via sphalerons

Detection via gamma-ray lines from quirky transitions

Collider signals dominated by quirky meson production

Abstract

We propose a new dark matter candidate, quirky dark matter, that is a scalar baryonic bound state of a new non-Abelian force that becomes strong below the electroweak scale. The bound state is made of chiral quirks: new fermions that transform under both the new strong force as well as in a chiral representation of the electroweak group, acquiring mass from the Higgs mechanism. Electric charge neutrality of the lightest baryon requires approximately degenerate quirk masses which also causes the charge radius of the bound state to be negligible. The abundance is determined by an asymmetry that is linked to the baryon and lepton numbers of the universe through electroweak sphalerons. Dark matter elastic scattering with nuclei proceeds through Higgs exchange as well as an electromagnetic polarizability operator which is just now being tested in direct detection experiments. A novel method to search for quirky dark matter is to look for a gamma-ray dark line spectroscopic feature in galaxy clusters that result from the quirky Lyman-alpha or quirky hyperfine transitions. Colliders are expected to dominantly produce quirky mesons, not quirky baryons, consequently large missing energy is not the primary collider signal of the physics associated with quirky dark matter.