Higgsino Dark Matter in High-Scale Supersymmetry

We study a supersymmetric (SUSY) Standard Model in which a Higgsino is light enough to be dark matter, while the other SUSY particles are much heavier than the weak scale. We carefully treat the effects of heavy SUSY particles to the Higgsino nature, especially taking into account the renormalization effects due to the large hierarchy between the Higgsino and the SUSY breaking scales. Inelastic scattering of the Higgsino dark matter with a nucleus is studied, and the constraints on the scattering by the direct detection experiments are discussed. This gives an upper limit on the new physics scale. Bounds on the dark matter-nucleon elastic scattering, the electric dipole moments, and direct production of Higgsinos, on the other hand, give a lower limit. We show the current status on the limits and discuss the future prospects.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figures. Version accepted for publication in JHE

Electroweakly-Interacting Dirac Dark Matter

We consider a class of fermionic dark matter candidates that are charged under both the SU(2)$_L$ and U(1)$_Y$ gauge interactions. In this case a certain amount of dark matter-Higgs couplings, which can split the dark matter into a pair of Majorana fermions, should be present to evade the constraints from the dark matter direct detection experiments. These effects may be probed by means of the dark matter-nucleus scattering via the Higgs-boson exchange process, as well as the electric dipole moments induced by the dark matter and its SU(2)$_L$ partner fields. In this article, we evaluate them with an effective field approach. It turns out that the constraints coming from the experiments for the quantities have already restricted the dark matter with hypercharge $Y\geq 3/2$. Future experiments have sensitivities to probe this class of dark matter candidates, and may disfavor the $Y\geq 1$ cases if no signal is observed. In this case, only the $Y=0$ and $1/2$ cases may be the remaining possibilities for the SU(2)$_L$ charged fermionic dark matter candidates.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Hidden Charged Dark Matter and Chiral Dark Radiation

In the light of recent possible tensions in the Hubble constant $H_0$ and the structure growth rate $\sigma_8$ between the Planck and other measurements, we investigate a hidden-charged dark matter (DM) model where DM interacts with hidden chiral fermions, which are charged under the hidden SU(N) and U(1) gauge interactions. The symmetries in this model assure these fermions to be massless. The DM in this model, which is a Dirac fermion and singlet under the hidden SU(N), is also assumed to be charged under the U(1) gauge symmetry, through which it can interact with the chiral fermions. Below the confinement scale of SU(N), the hidden quark condensate spontaneously breaks the U(1) gauge symmetry such that there remains a discrete symmetry, which accounts for the stability of DM. This condensate also breaks a flavor symmetry in this model and Nambu-Goldstone bosons associated with this flavor symmetry appear below the confinement scale. The hidden U(1) gauge boson and hidden quarks/Nambu-Goldstone bosons are components of dark radiation (DR) above/below the confinement scale. These light fields increase the effective number of neutrinos by $\delta N_{\rm eff}\simeq 0.59$ above the confinement scale for $N=2$, resolving the tension in the measurements of the Hubble constant by Planck and Hubble Space Telescope if the confinement scale is $\lesssim 1$ eV. DM and DR continuously scatter with each other via the hidden U(1) gauge interaction, which suppresses the matter power spectrum and results in a smaller structure growth rate. The DM sector couples to the Standard Model sector through the exchange of a real singlet scalar mixing with the Higgs boson, which makes it possible to probe our model in DM direct detection experiments. Variants of this model are also discussed, which may offer alternative ways to investigate this scenario.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures; v2: version accepted for publication in PL