Lepton-Flavored Scalar Dark Matter with Minimal Flavor Violation

TL;DR

This paper investigates lepton-flavored scalar dark matter within a minimal flavor violation framework, analyzing its interactions, constraints from experiments, and potential to explain Higgs flavor-violating decays, with viable parameter space testable by future data.

Contribution

It introduces a lepton-flavored scalar dark matter model with minimal flavor violation, incorporating right-handed neutrinos and exploring experimental constraints and phenomenological implications.

Findings

Viable parameter space consistent with current experimental constraints.

Potential explanation for the Higgs h -> mu tau decay observed by CMS.

Future experiments can further test the model's predictions.

Abstract

We explore scalar dark matter that is part of a lepton flavor triplet satisfying symmetry requirements under the hypothesis of minimal flavor violation. Beyond the standard model, the theory contains in addition three right-handed neutrinos that participate in the seesaw mechanism for light neutrino mass generation. The dark-matter candidate couples to standard-model particles via Higgs-portal renormalizable interactions as well as to leptons through dimension-six operators, all of which have minimal flavor violation built-in. We consider restrictions on the new scalars from the Higgs boson measurements, observed relic density, dark-matter direct detection experiments, LEP II measurements on e+e- scattering into a photon plus missing energy, and searches for flavor-violating lepton decays. The viable parameter space can be tested further with future data. Also, we investigate the possibility of the new scalars' couplings accounting for the tentative hint of Higgs flavor-violating decay h -> mu tau recently detected in the CMS experiment. They are allowed by constraints from other Higgs data to produce a rate of this decay roughly compatible with the CMS finding.