Implications of dark sector mixing on leptophilic scalar dark matter

TL;DR

This paper explores how mixing between singlet and doublet leptonic dark sectors affects scalar dark matter detection, expanding viable parameter space and proposing collider signatures for future detection at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge-invariant mixing mechanism in leptonic dark sectors that relaxes existing dark matter constraints and provides distinctive collider signatures.

Findings

Mixing relaxes indirect detection bounds on scalar dark matter.

Distinctive kinematic peaks indicate the presence of dark sector mixing.

Enhanced parameter space for relic density consistent dark matter models.

Abstract

We propose a new viable outlook to the mixing between a singlet and a doublet leptonic dark sector fields. This choice relaxes the dark matter (DM) search constraints on the quintessential scalar singlet DM as well as presents new opportunities for its detection in the lab. The mixing produces an arbitrary mass difference between the two components of the extra doublet in a gauge-invariant way, without introducing any new scale of electroweak symmetry breaking in the theory. It also provides a useful handle to distinguish between the dark sector particles of different isospins, which is a challenging task otherwise. As the dark leptons coannihilate non-trivially, the mixing effectively enhances the viable parameter space for the relic density constraint. In low DM mass regime, our analysis shows that with a non-zero mixing, it is possible to relax the existing indirect search bounds on the upper limit of the DM-Standard Model coupling. From the analysis of the $3\tau + E^{miss}_T$ and $\ell\,\tau + E^{miss}_T$ channels for LHC at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV, we show that one ensures the presence of the mixing parameter between the dark sector particles of the theory by looking at the peak and tail positions of the kinematic distributions. Even with a tweak in the values of other free parameters within the viable parameter region, the distinct peak and tail positions of the kinematic distributions remains a constant feature of the model. While both the channels present us the opportunity to detect the mixing signature at the LHC/HL-LHC, the former gives better results in terms of a larger region of mixing parameter. From the fiducial cross section, the projected statistical significance for the integrated luminosity, ${\mathscr L} = 3~\text{ab}^{-1}$, are shown for a combined parameter region obeying all the existing constraints, where there is the best possibility to detect such a signature.