Dilaton Forbidden Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper explores how dilaton effective field theory can naturally explain forbidden dark matter, identifying parameter regions consistent with observed relic density through the behavior of pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons and the dilaton.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of dilaton effective field theory as a model for forbidden dark matter, linking lattice-inspired theories to cosmological observations.

Findings

dEFT can produce the correct dark matter relic density

The model naturally incorporates the forbidden dark matter mechanism

Parameter space regions align with cosmological measurements

Abstract

Dilaton effective field theory (dEFT) describes the long distance behavior of certain confining, near-conformal gauge theories that have been studied via lattice computation. Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (pNGBs), emerging from the breaking of approximate, continuous, internal symmetries, are coupled to an additional scalar particle, the dilaton, arising from the spontaneous breaking of approximate scale invariance. This effective theory has been employed to study possible extensions of the standard model. In this paper, we propose a complementary role for dEFT, as a description of the dark matter of the universe, with the pNGBs identified as the dark-matter particles. We show that this theory provides a natural implementation of the "forbidden" dark matter mechanism, and we identify regions of parameter space for which the thermal history of dEFT yields the measured dark matter relic density.