The Flavour Portal to Dark Matter

We present a class of models in which dark matter (DM) is a fermionic singlet under the Standard Model (SM) gauge group but is charged under a symmetry of flavour that acts as well on the SM fermions. Interactions between DM and SM particles are mediated by the scalar fields that spontaneously break the flavour symmetry, the so-called flavons. In the case of gauged flavour symmetries, the interactions are also mediated by the flavour gauge bosons. We first discuss the construction and the generic features of this class of models. Then a concrete example with an abelian flavour symmetry is considered. We compute the complementary constraints from the relic abundance, direct detection experiments and flavour observables, showing that wide portions of the parameter space are still viable. Other possibilities like non-abelian flavour symmetries can be analysed within the same framework.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, more detailed presentation of flavour constraints, version accepted for publication in PR

Freeze-in through portals

The popular freeze-out paradigm for Dark Matter (DM) production, relies on DM-baryon couplings of the order of the weak interactions. However, different search strategies for DM have failed to provide a conclusive evidence of such (non-gravitational) interactions, while greatly reducing the parameter space of many representative models. This motivates the study of alternative mechanisms for DM genesis. In the freeze-in framework, the DM is slowly populated from the thermal bath while never reaching equilibrium. In this work, we analyse in detail the possibility of producing a frozen-in DM via a mediator particle which acts as a portal. We give analytical estimates of different freeze-in regimes and support them with full numerical analyses, taking into account the proper distribution functions of bath particles. Finally, we constrain the parameter space of generic models by requiring agreement with DM relic abundance observations.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure

Thermal and non-thermal production of dark matter via Z'-portal(s)

We study the genesis of dark matter in the primordial Universe for representative classes of Z'-portals models. For weak-scale Z' mediators we compute the range of values of the kinetic mixing allowed by WMAP/PLANCK experiments corresponding to a FIMP regime. We show that very small values of the kinetic coupling (1.e-12 < delta < 1.e-11) are sufficient to produce the right amount of dark matter. We also analyse the case of very massive gauge mediators, whose mass is larger than the reheating temperature, "T_RH", with a weak-scale coupling to ordinary matter. Relic abundance constraints then impose a direct correlation between T_RH and the effective scale "Lambda" of the interactions: Lambda ~ 1.e3--1.e5 * T_RH. Finally we describe in some detail the process of dark thermalisation and study its consequences on the computation of the relic abundance.Comment: version accepted for publication in JCA

New techniques for chargino-neutralino detection at LHC

The recent LHC discovery of a Higgs-like boson at 126 GeV has important consequences for SUSY, pushing the spectrum of strong-interacting supersymmetric particles to high energies, very difficult to probe at the LHC. This gives extra motivation to study the direct production of electroweak particles, as charginos and neutralinos, which are presently very poorly constrained. The aim of this work is to improve the analysis of chargino-neutralino pair production at LHC, focusing on the kinematics of the processes. We propose a new method based on the study of the poles of a certain kinematical variable. This complements other approaches, giving new information about the spectrum and improving the signal-to-background ratio. We illustrate the method in particular SUSY models, and show that working with the LHC at 100/fb luminosity one would be able to distinguish the SUSY signal from the Standard Model background.Comment: accepted for publication in JHE

Production Regimes for Self-Interacting Dark Matter

In the context of Self-Interacting Dark Matter as a solution for the small-scale structure problems, we consider the possibility that Dark Matter could have been produced without being in thermal equilibrium with the Standard Model bath. We discuss one by one the following various dark matter production regimes of this kind: freeze-in, reannihilation and dark freeze-out. We exemplify how these mechanisms work in the context of the particularly simple Hidden Vector Dark Matter model. In contrast to scenarios where there is thermal equilibrium with the Standard Model bath, we find two regimes which can easily satisfy all the laboratory and cosmological constraints. These are dark freeze-out with 3-to-2 annihilations and freeze-in via a light mediator. In the first regime, different temperatures in the visible and the Dark Matter sectors allow us to avoid the constraints coming from cosmic structure formation as well as the use of non-perturbative couplings to reproduce the observed relic density. For the second regime, different couplings are responsible for Dark Matter relic density and self-interactions, permitting to surpass BBN, X-ray, CMB and direct detection constraints.Comment: 40 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in JCA

Gauge Coupling Unification and Non-Equilibrium Thermal Dark Matter

We study a new mechanism for the production of dark matter in the universe which does not rely on thermal equilibrium. Dark matter is populated from the thermal bath subsequent to inflationary reheating via a massive mediator whose mass is above the reheating scale, T_R. To this end, we consider models with an extra U(1) gauge symmetry broken at some intermediate scale M, of the order of 10^10 -- 10^12 GeV. We show that not only does the model allow for gauge coupling unification (at a higher scale associated with grand unification) but can naturally provide a dark matter candidate which is a Standard Model singlet but charged under the extra U(1). The intermediate scale gauge boson(s) which are predicted in several E6/SO(10) constructions can be a natural mediator between dark matter and the thermal bath. We show that the dark matter abundance, while never having achieved thermal equilibrium, is fixed shortly after the reheating epoch by the relation T_R^3/M^4. As a consequence, we show that the unification of gauge couplings which determines M also fixes the reheating temperature T_R, which can be as high as 10^11 GeV.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

What is a Natural SUSY scenario?

The idea of "Natural SUSY", understood as a supersymmetric scenario where the fine-tuning is as mild as possible, is a reasonable guide to explore supersymmetric phenomenology. In this paper, we re-examine this issue in the context of the MSSM including several improvements, such as the mixing of the fine-tuning conditions for different soft terms and the presence of potential extra fine-tunings that must be combined with the electroweak one. We give tables and plots that allow to easily evaluate the fine-tuning and the corresponding naturalness bounds for any theoretical model defined at any high-energy (HE) scale. Then, we analyze in detail the complete fine-tuning bounds for the unconstrained MSSM, defined at any HE scale. We show that Natural SUSY does not demand light stops. Actually, an average stop mass below 800 GeV is disfavored, though one of the stops might be very light. Regarding phenomenology, the most stringent upper bound from naturalness is the one on the gluino mass, which typically sets the present level of fine-tuning at ${\cal O}(1\%)$. However, this result presents a strong dependence on the HE scale. E.g. if the latter is $10^7$ GeV the level of fine-tuning is $\sim$ four times less severe. Finally, the most robust result of Natural SUSY is by far that Higgsinos should be rather light, certainly below 700 GeV for a fine-tuning of ${\cal O}(1\%)$ or milder. Incidentally, this upper bound is not far from $\simeq1$ TeV, which is the value required if dark matter is made of Higgsinos.Comment: 41 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables. References added, matches JHEP published versio