Probing Leptophobic Dark Sectors via Gravitational Wave Signatures

TL;DR

This paper explores a gauged baryon number extension of the Standard Model, proposing that gravitational wave signals from early universe phase transitions can serve as a new probe for dark matter and new gauge bosons, complementing collider and direct detection methods.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal anomaly-free model with a gauged $U(1)_B$ symmetry, analyzing its gravitational wave signatures from first-order phase transitions as a novel detection avenue.

Findings

Gravitational waves from $U(1)_B$ breaking can be detected by LISA and ET.

Dark matter mass around 1-10 TeV is most testable via gravitational waves.

Model parameters are consistent with current dark matter and collider constraints.

Abstract

We study a minimally extended version of the Standard Model where baryon number is gauged with a $U(1)_B$ symmetry. This model can be made anomaly-free by adding a set of additional fermions. The lightest component of these fermions behaves as a viable dark matter candidate. We show that the spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_B$ symmetry can produce gravitational waves via bubble dynamics resulting from a first-order phase transition, which can be detected in future gravitational wave experiments like LISA and ET. Such gravitational wave signatures can be used as a probe to constrain the model in future observations and complement dark matter and collider searches. We perform a random numerical scan of the parameter space and derive the viable region consistent with current bounds from dark matter experiments such as LUX-ZEPLIN and XENONnT and sensitive to future gravitational wave experiments. We find that dark matter with mass of order $\mathcal{O}(1 - 10)$ TeV is the most interesting to test in future gravitational wave as well as laboratory experiments. In the viable parameter space, the mass of the $Z'$ gauge boson associated with the $U(1)_B$ lies in the few-tens of TeV region, and the mass of the scalar associated with the symmetry breaking lies around a few hundred GeV to TeV scale. Hence, the dark matter and mediator mass scales typically fall beyond the reach of present direct detection experiments and are marginally accessible at current collider energies.