Dark matter within the minimal flavour violation ansatz

TL;DR

This paper explores scalar dark matter candidates within the minimal flavour violation framework, analyzing their interactions, viable parameter space, and experimental constraints, revealing potential for light and heavy DM detection.

Contribution

It systematically studies flavoured scalar dark matter models, highlighting differences from Higgs portal scenarios and identifying regions compatible with current experimental bounds.

Findings

Light DM in the GeV range can be viable.

Heavier DM candidates above the Higgs resonance are allowed.

Some parameter regions may be beyond future experimental reach.

Abstract

Minimal Flavour Violation hypothesis can provide an attractive framework for Dark Matter (DM). We consider scalar DM candidates carrying flavour quantum numbers and whose representation under the flavour group guarantees DM stability. They interact with the Standard Model fields through Higgs portal at renormalisable level and also to quarks through dimension-6 operators. We provide a systematic analysis of the viable parameter space for the DM fields, which are triplet of the flavour group, considering several DM-quark interactions. In this framework, we analyse in which cases the viable parameter space differs from Higgs portal models thanks to the underlying flavour structure. In contrast to minimal Higgs portal scenarios, we find that light DM in the GeV mass range as well as heavier candidates above Higgs resonance could be allowed by colliders, direct and indirect DM detection searches as well as flavour constraints. The large mass regime above the top mass could even be beyond the reach of future experiments such as Xenon 1T.