Scalar Rayleigh Dark Matter: current bounds and future prospects

TL;DR

This paper investigates a scalar Rayleigh Dark Matter model, analyzing current experimental bounds and future detection prospects, highlighting the complementarity of collider and cosmological searches for different mass ranges.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of effective interactions between scalar Dark Matter and electroweak bosons, including current constraints and future experimental sensitivities.

Findings

Thermally produced scalar Rayleigh Dark Matter at hundreds of GeV can be fully tested with upcoming experiments.

Future forecasts will explore new parameter space for lighter Dark Matter candidates.

Collider and cosmological probes together offer a powerful approach to test these interactions.

Abstract

Dark Matter can interact with electroweak gauge bosons via higher-dimensional operators, in spite of being neutral under gauge interactions, much like neutral atoms interact with photons through Rayleigh scattering. This study explores effective interactions between a real scalar Dark Matter particle, singlet under the SM gauge group, and electroweak gauge bosons. We present a comprehensive analysis of current constraints and projected sensitivities from both lepton and hadron colliders as well as direct and indirect detection experiments in testing Rayleigh Dark Matter interactions. We find that, thanks to the complementarity between collider experiments and cosmological probes, thermally produced Rayleigh Dark Matter at the hundreds of GeV scale can be thoroughly tested with the next generation of experiments. For lighter candidates, upcoming forecasts will explore uncharted parameter space, significantly surpassing the thermal Dark Matter benchmark.