Higgs Portals for Thermal Dark Matter - EFT Perspectives and the NMSSM -

TL;DR

This paper explores a low-energy effective model of thermal dark matter involving a singlet Majorana fermion interacting via Higgs portals, comparing it with the NMSSM to identify viable dark matter scenarios and signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified EFT framework for Higgs portal dark matter, analyzing its relic density and detection prospects, and compares it with the NMSSM to identify new dark matter regions.

Findings

Blind spot solutions can suppress direct detection signals.

A natural weak scale mass for dark matter arises from scalar singlet VEV.

A new bino-singlino dark matter region is identified in the extended model.

Abstract

We analyze a low energy effective model of Dark Matter in which the thermal relic density is provided by a singlet Majorana fermion which interacts with the Higgs fields via higher dimensional operators. Direct detection signatures may be reduced if blind spot solutions exist, which naturally appear in models with extended Higgs sectors. Explicit mass terms for the Majorana fermion can be forbidden by a $Z_3$ symmetry, which in addition leads to a reduction of the number of higher dimensional operators. Moreover, a weak scale mass for the Majorana fermion is naturally obtained from the vacuum expectation value of a scalar singlet field. The proper relic density may be obtained by the $s$-channel interchange of Higgs and gauge bosons, with the longitudinal mode of the $Z$ boson (the neutral Goldstone mode) playing a relevant role in the annihilation process. This model shares many properties with the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (NMSSM) with light singlinos and heavy scalar and gauge superpartners. In order to test the validity of the low energy effective field theory, we compare its predictions with those of the ultraviolet complete NMSSM. Extending our framework to include $Z_3$ neutral Majorana fermions, analogous to the bino in the NMSSM, we find the appearance of a new bino-singlino well tempered Dark Matter region.