The case for decaying spin-3/2 dark matter

TL;DR

This paper proposes a spin-3/2 particle coupled to a sterile neutrino as a viable dark matter candidate, produced during inflation, with detectable signals like monochromatic photons and neutrinos.

Contribution

It introduces a new dark matter candidate with a specific coupling mechanism and analyzes its production, stability, and potential signals in current and future experiments.

Findings

Relic abundance matches observations for reheating temperatures above 10^8 GeV.

The candidate's decay rate is within experimental limits for a wide mass range.

Potential detection via monochromatic photons and neutrinos in IceCube and similar detectors.

Abstract

We couple a sterile neutrino sector to a spin-3/2 particle and show that with a Planck reduced coupling, we can obtain a sufficiently long lifetime making the spin-3/2 particle a good dark matter candidate. We show that this dark matter candidate can be produced during inflationary reheating through the scattering of Standard Model particles. The relic abundance as determined by Planck and other experimental measurements is attained for reasonable values of the reheating temperature $T_{\rm RH} \gtrsim 10^{8}$ GeV. We consider two possible gauge invariant couplings to the extended Standard Model. We find a large range of masses are possible which respect the experimental limits on its decay rate. We expect smoking-gun signals in the form of a monochromatic photon with a possible monochromatic neutrino, which can be probed in the near future in IceCube and other indirect detection experiments.