Review of strongly-coupled composite dark matter models and lattice simulations

TL;DR

This review discusses strongly-coupled composite dark matter models, emphasizing lattice simulations for predictions, exploring candidate particles, detection strategies, collider phenomenology, and the role of symmetries in interactions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of composite dark matter models, highlighting the importance of lattice calculations and symmetries in understanding their properties and detection.

Findings

Identification of dark mesons, baryons, and glueballs as dark matter candidates

Strategies for direct detection via dark moments and symmetries

Lattice simulations offer precise predictions for strongly-coupled theories

Abstract

We review models of new physics in which dark matter arises as a composite bound state from a confining strongly-coupled non-Abelian gauge theory. We discuss several qualitatively distinct classes of composite candidates, including dark mesons, dark baryons, and dark glueballs. We highlight some of the promising strategies for direct detection, especially through dark moments, using the symmetries and properties of the composite description to identify the operators that dominate the interactions of dark matter with matter, as well as dark matter self-interactions. We briefly discuss the implications of these theories at colliders, especially the (potentially novel) phenomenology of dark mesons in various regimes of the models. Throughout the review, we highlight the use of lattice calculations in the study of these strongly-coupled theories, to obtain precise quantitative predictions and new insights into the dynamics.