Dark Matter and Gauged Flavor Symmetries

TL;DR

This paper explores flavored dark matter models where stability arises from an unbroken subgroup of the SM flavor group, analyzing their phenomenology and experimental constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a gauged flavor symmetry framework for flavored dark matter, deriving bounds on DM mass and interactions from various experimental data.

Findings

DM mass bounded between 0.5 and 5 TeV for Dirac fermion models

Flavor gauge interactions impose specific phenomenological constraints

Higgs portal interactions provide alternative DM detection channels

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenology of flavored dark matter (DM). DM stability is guaranteed by an accidental ${\mathcal Z}_3$ symmetry, a subgroup of the standard model (SM) flavor group that is not broken by the SM Yukawa interactions. We consider an explicit realization where the quark part of the SM flavor group is fully gauged. If the dominant interactions between DM and visible sector are through flavor gauge bosons, as we show for Dirac fermion flavored DM, then the DM mass is bounded between roughly $0.5$ TeV and $5$ TeV if the DM multiplet mass is split only radiatively. In general, however, no such relation exists. We demonstrate this using scalar flavored DM where the main interaction with the SM is through the Higgs portal. For both cases we derive constraints from flavor, cosmology, direct and indirect DM detection, and collider searches.