Beyond Minimal Lepton Flavored Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper explores a novel class of flavored dark matter models interacting with leptons, allowing for complex flavor structures beyond minimal flavor violation, with implications for collider searches and dark matter stability.

Contribution

It introduces a beyond MFV framework for lepton-flavored dark matter, analyzing flavor-changing effects, stability conditions, and collider signatures in a comprehensive manner.

Findings

Large flavor-changing couplings are possible within the model.

Dark matter mass can be below the TeV scale.

Potential collider signatures at lepton and hadron colliders.

Abstract

We consider a class of flavored dark matter (DM) theories where dark matter interacts with the Standard Model lepton fields at the renormalizable level. We allow for a general coupling matrix between the dark matter and leptons whose structure is beyond the one permitted by the minimal flavor violation (MFV) assumption. It is assumed that this is the only new source of flavor violation in addition to the Standard Model (SM) Yukawa interactions. The setup can be described by augmenting the SM flavor symmetry by an additional $\mathrm{SU}(3)_{\chi}$, under which the dark matter $\chi$ transforms. This framework is especially phenomenologically rich, due to possible novel flavor-changing interactions which are not present within the more restrictive MFV framework. As a representative case study of this setting, which we call "beyond MFV" (BMFV), we consider Dirac fermion dark matter which transforms as a singlet under the SM gauge group and a triplet under $\mathrm{SU}(3)_{\chi}$. The DM fermion couples to the SM lepton sector through a scalar mediator $\phi$. Unlike the case of quark-flavored DM, we show that there is no $\mathbb{Z}_3$ symmetry within either the MFV or BMFV settings which automatically stabilizes the lepton-flavored DM. We discuss constraints on this setup from flavor-changing processes, DM relic abundance as well as direct and indirect detections. We find that relatively large flavor-changing couplings are possible, while the dark matter mass is still within the phenomenologically interesting region below the TeV scale. Collider signatures which can be potentially searched for at the lepton and hadron colliders are discussed. Finally, we discuss the implications for decaying dark matter, which can appear if an additional stabilizing symmetry is not imposed.