Dark matter freeze-out during SU(2)L confinement

Howard, Jessica N.; Ipek, Seyda; Tait, Tim M.P.; Turner, Jessica

doi:10.1007/jhep02(2022)047

Dark matter freeze-out during SU(2)L confinement

Howard, Jessica N.; Ipek, Seyda; Tait, Tim M.P.; Turner, Jessica

Authors

Jessica N. Howard

Seyda Ipek

Tim M.P. Tait

Jessica Turner jessica.turner@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Abstract

We explore the possibility that dark matter is a pair of vector-like fermionic SU(2)L doublets and propose a novel mechanism of dark matter production that proceeds through the confinement of the weak sector of the Standard Model. This confinement phase causes the Standard Model doublets and dark matter to confine into pions. The dark pions freeze-out before the weak sector deconfines and generate a relic abundance of dark matter. We solve the Boltzmann equations for this scenario to determine the scale of confinement and constituent dark matter mass required to produce the observed relic density. We determine which regions of this parameter space evade direct detection, collider bounds, and successfully produce the observed relic density of dark matter. For a TeV scale pair of vector-like fermionic SU(2)L doublets, we find the weak confinement scale to be ∼ 700 TeV.

Citation

Howard, J. N., Ipek, S., Tait, T. M., & Turner, J. (2022). Dark matter freeze-out during SU(2)L confinement. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2022(2), Article 47. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep02%282022%29047

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 23, 2022
Online Publication Date	Feb 7, 2022
Publication Date	2022
Deposit Date	May 4, 2022
Publicly Available Date	May 5, 2022
Journal	Journal of High Energy Physics
Print ISSN	1126-6708
Publisher	Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	2022
Issue	2
Article Number	47
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep02%282022%29047

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