Dark Atoms: Asymmetry and Direct Detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a UV-complete Atomic Dark Matter model that explains cosmological asymmetries, dark matter abundance, and small-scale structure, while also addressing experimental anomalies and predicting detectable signals.

Contribution

It provides a novel UV completion of atomic dark matter linking it to neutrino decay, addressing multiple cosmological issues simultaneously.

Findings

Addresses matter-antimatter asymmetry and dark matter abundance

Reconciles experimental signals with null results in dark matter detection

Predicts observable signals in upcoming experiments

Abstract

We present a simple UV completion of Atomic Dark Matter (aDM) in which heavy right-handed neutrinos decay to induce both dark and lepton number densities. This model addresses several outstanding cosmological problems: the matter/anti-matter asymmetry, the dark matter abundance, the number of light degrees of freedom in the early universe, and the smoothing of small-scale structure. Additionally, this realization of aDM may reconcile the CoGeNT excess with recently published null results and predicts a signal in the CRESST Oxygen band. We also find that, due to unscreened long-range interactions, the residual un recombined dark ions settle into a diffuse isothermal halo.