A Family of WISPy Dark Matter Candidates

Abstract

Dark matter made from non-thermally produced bosons can have very low, possibly sub-eV masses. Axions and hidden photons are prominent examples of such "dark" very weakly interacting light (slim) particles (WISPs). A suitable mechanism for their non-thermal production is the misalignment mechanism. Their dominant interaction with Standard Model (SM) particles is via photons. In this note we want to go beyond these standard examples and discuss a wide range of scalar and pseudo-scalar bosons interacting with SM matter fermions via derivative interactions. Suitably light candidates arise naturally as pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons. In particular we are interested in examples, inspired by familons, whose interactions have a non-trivial flavor structure.

14 pages, 3 figures. v2 corrected Eq. (3.14)

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Cited by in corpus (27)

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• Misalignment & Co.: (Pseudo-)scalar and vector dark matter with curvature couplings
• Flavourful Axion Phenomenology
• Lightish but clumpy: scalar dark matter from inflationary fluctuations
• Anomaly-free flavor models for Nambu-Goldstone bosons and the 3.5 keV X-ray line signal
• Probing pseudo-Goldstone dark matter at the LHC
• Lepton Flavor Violation with Displaced Vertices
• Monodromy Dark Matter
• Massive neutrinos and invisible axion minimally connected
• Axions and Axion-Like Particles
• Search for lepton flavour violating muon decay mediated by a new light particle in the MEG experiment
• Axion Dark Matter from Lepton flavor-violating Decays
• Chiral Froggatt-Nielsen models, gauge anomalies and flavourful axions
• Exploring ALPs beyond the canonical
• Flavor violating muon decay into an electron and a light gauge boson
• Very Light Asymmetric Dark Matter
• New Limits on Leptophilic Axionlike Particles and Majorons from ArgoNeuT
• Mixed WIMP-axion dark matter
• A detailed exploration of the EDGES 21 cm absorption anomaly and axion-induced cooling
• Model identification in ${\mu }^{-}\to e^{-}$ conversion with invisible boson emission using muonic atoms
• Leptoquark-induced CLFV decays with a light SM-singlet scalar
• Searching for photon-ALPs mixing effects in AGN gamma-ray energy spectra
• Glow in the Dark Matter: Observing galactic halos with scattered light
• Analytic approach to axion-like-particle emission in core-collapse supernovae