Dark higher-form portals and duality

TL;DR

This paper investigates dark matter models using higher-form antisymmetric tensor fields, revealing new theoretical insights and potential experimental signatures distinct from traditional scalar or vector descriptions.

Contribution

It introduces the embedding of dark matter particles into higher-form tensor fields, constructs effective interactions, and provides the first full propagator for the rank-two field with a pseudoscalar mass term.

Findings

Higher-form fields offer alternative dark matter frameworks.

Constructed minimal effective interaction bases with Standard Model fields.

Presented the first full propagator for the rank-two tensor field.

Abstract

Light scalar or vector particles are among the most studied dark matter candidates. Yet, those are always described as scalar or vector fields. In this paper, we explore instead the embedding of the scalar particle in an antisymmetric rank-three tensor field, and the dark photon into an antisymmetric rank-two tensor field (a so-called Kalb-Ramond field), and construct minimal bases of effective interactions with Standard Model fields. Then, keeping phenomenological applications as our main objective, a number of theoretical aspects are clarified, in particular related to the impact of existing dualities among the corresponding free theories, and concerning their Stueckelberg representations. Besides, for the rank-two field, we present for the first time its full propagator, accounting for the possible presence of a pseudoscalar mass term. Thanks to these results, and with their different kinematics, gauge-invariant limits, and Lorentz properties, we show that these higher-form fields provide genuine alternative frameworks, with different couplings and expected signatures at low-energy or at colliders.