Dark Matter from Minimal Flavor Violation

TL;DR

This paper explores flavored dark matter models consistent with Minimal Flavor Violation, predicting stable dark matter candidates with specific mass and coupling patterns, and provides a phenomenological analysis of a flavor triplet scalar.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for flavored dark matter under MFV, detailing stability, mass splittings, and coupling structures, with a specific phenomenological case study.

Findings

MFV ensures stability of the lightest flavored dark matter particle.

Specific mass splitting patterns among dark matter flavors are predicted.

Coupling structures lead to distinctive cosmological and experimental signatures.

Abstract

We consider theories of flavored dark matter, in which the dark matter particle is part of a multiplet transforming nontrivially under the flavor group of the Standard Model in a manner consistent with the principle of Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV). MFV automatically leads to the stability of the lightest state for a large number of flavor multiplets. If neutral, this particle is an excellent dark matter candidate. Furthermore, MFV implies specific patterns of mass splittings among the flavors of dark matter and governs the structure of the couplings between dark matter and ordinary particles, leading to a rich and predictive cosmology and phenomenology. We present an illustrative phenomenological study of an effective theory of a flavor SU(3)_Q triplet, gauge singlet scalar.