Charting the Flavour Structure of Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper explores the flavour structure of t-channel thermal dark matter, analyzing how it aligns with current experimental bounds and identifying promising scenarios for future detection.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for analyzing flavour symmetries in dark matter models and provides a detailed phenomenological study of flavour singlet scenarios with comprehensive experimental constraints.

Findings

Allowed deviations from flavour-symmetric limits quantified.

Identified parameter regions compatible with relic abundance and experimental bounds.

Assessed future discovery prospects in flavour and direct detection experiments.

Abstract

What flavour structure of $t$-channel thermal dark matter remains compatible with current flavour physics and direct detection bounds? We broadly chart the space of hypotheses using the framework of flavour symmetries and their breaking patterns. We then focus on scenarios in which the fermionic dark matter and its scalar mediator are flavour singlets, falling into the class of rank-1 flavour violation. For two representative benchmarks, quarkphilic ($q_L$) and leptophilic ($e_R$), we perform a comprehensive phenomenological analysis, fitting the relic abundance and examining the interplay among flavour observables, direct detection, and collider searches. Our results quantify the allowed deviations from flavour-symmetric limits and assess the discovery prospects in future flavour and direct detection experiments.