On the Origin of Light Dark Matter Species
Apr, 2010
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Abstract: (arXiv)
TeV-mass dark matter charged under a new GeV-scale gauge force can explain electronic cosmic-ray anomalies. We propose that the CoGeNT and DAMA direct detection experiments are observing scattering of light stable states -- "GeV-Matter" -- that are charged under this force and constitute a small fraction of the dark matter halo. Dark higgsinos in a supersymmetric dark sector are natural candidates for GeV-Matter that scatter off protons with a universal cross-section of 5 x 10^{-38} cm^2 and can naturally be split by 10-30 keV so that their dominant interaction with protons is down-scattering. As an example, down-scattering of an O(5) GeV dark higgsino can simultaneously explain the spectra observed by both CoGeNT and DAMA. The event rates in these experiments correspond to a GeV-Matter abundance of 0.2-1% of the halo mass density. This abundance can arise directly from thermal freeze-out at weak coupling, or from the late decay of an unstable TeV-scale WIMP. Our proposal can be tested by searches for exotics in the BaBar and Belle datasets.Note:
- 31 text pages, 4 figures, revision includes corrected Germanium quenching factor and clarified text in Sec. 5 •
- Submitted to Physical Review D
- dark matter: detector
- mass difference
- DAMA
- WIMP
- dark matter: density
- Higgsino
- BaBar
- BELLE
- mixing: kinetic
- gauge field theory: U(1)
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