Direct constraints on charged excitations of dark matter

Abstract

If the neutral component of weak-scale dark matter is accompanied by a charged excitation separated by a mass gap of less than ~20 MeV, WIMPs can form stable bound states with nuclei. We show that the recent progress in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay sets the first direct constraint on the exoergic reaction of WIMP-nucleus bound state formation. We calculate the rate for such process in representative models and show that the double-beta decay experiments provide unique sensitivity to a large fraction of parameter space of the WIMP doublet model, complementary to constraints imposed by cosmology and direct collider searches.

arXiv commentFinal version. Published in PRL 109, 251302 (2012)

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• Luminous Signals of Inelastic Dark Matter in Large Detectors
• Very Degenerate Higgsino Dark Matter
• Self-Destructing Dark Matter
• Dark Matter Capture by Atomic Nuclei
• Search for MeV Electron Recoils from Dark Matter in EXO-200
• Search for Charged Excited States of Dark Matter with KamLAND-Zen