Direct Detection of Leptophilic Dark Matter in a Model with Radiative Neutrino Masses

TL;DR

This paper proposes a model where leptophilic dark matter interacts with nuclei via 1-loop photon exchange, and analyzes its detectability in current and future direct detection experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a new electroweak scale model linking dark matter and neutrino masses, with detailed analysis of direct detection prospects.

Findings

Current XENON100 data constrains some parameter space.

Future XENON1T data can significantly probe the model.

Dark matter interacts via photon exchange despite leptophilic nature.

Abstract

We consider an electro-weak scale model for Dark Matter (DM) and radiative neutrino mass generation. Despite the leptophilic nature of DM with no direct couplings to quarks and gluons, scattering with nuclei is induced at the 1-loop level through photon exchange. Effectively, there are charge-charge, dipole-charge and dipole-dipole interactions. We investigate the parameter space consistent with constraints from neutrino masses and mixing, charged lepton-flavour violation, perturbativity, and the thermal production of the correct DM abundance, and calculate the expected event rate in DM direct detection experiments. We show that current data from XENON100 start to constrain certain regions of the allowed parameter space, whereas future data from XENON1T has the potential to significantly probe the model.