Non-Abelian dark matter and dark radiation
Buen-Abad, Manuel A.; Marques-Tavares, Gustavo; Schmaltz, Martin
We propose a new class of dark matter models with unusual phenomenology. What is ordinary about our models is that dark matter particles are weakly interacting massive particles; they are weakly coupled to the standard model and have weak scale masses. What is unusual is that they come in multiplets of a new dark non-Abelian gauge group with milliweak coupling. The massless dark gluons of this dark gauge group contribute to the energy density of the Universe as a form of weakly self-interacting dark radiation. In this paper we explore the consequences of having (i) dark matter in multiplets, (ii) self-interacting dark radiation, and (iii) dark matter which is weakly coupled to dark radiation. We find that (i) dark matter cross sections are modified by multiplicity factors which have significant consequences for collider searches and indirect detection, and (ii) dark gluons have thermal abundances which affect the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as dark radiation. Unlike additional massless neutrino species the dark gluons are interacting and have vanishing viscosity and (iii) the coupling of dark radiation to dark matter represents a new mechanism for damping the large scale structure power spectrum. A combination of additional radiation and slightly damped structure is interesting because it can remove tensions between global ΛCDM fits from the CMB and direct measurements of the Hubble expansion rate (H0) and large scale structure (σ8).
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