Physics Letters B 773 (2017) 513–520
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Hidden charged dark matter and chiral dark radiation
P. Ko
a
, Natsumi Nagata
b,∗
, Yong Tang
b
a
School of Physics, Korea Institute for Advanced Study , Seoul 02455, South Korea
b
Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113–0033, Japan
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
30 June 2017
Received
in revised form 27 July 2017
Accepted
24 August 2017
Available
online 5 September 2017
Editor:
J. Hisano
In the light of recent possible tensions in the Hubble constant H
0
and the structure growth rate σ
8
between the Planck and other measurements, we investigate a hidden-charged dark matter (DM)
model where DM interacts with hidden chiral fermions, which are charged under the hidden SU(N)
and U(1) gauge interactions. The symmetries in this model assure these fermions to be massless. The
DM in this model, which is a Dirac fermion and singlet under the hidden SU(N), is also assumed to
be charged under the U(1) gauge symmetry, through which it can interact with the chiral fermions.
Below the confinement scale of SU(N), the hidden quark condensate spontaneously breaks the U(1) gauge
symmetry such that there remains a discrete symmetry, which accounts for the stability of DM. This
condensate also breaks a flavor symmetry in this model and Nambu–Goldstone bosons associated with
this flavor symmetry appear below the confinement scale. The hidden U(1) gauge boson and hidden
quarks/Nambu–Goldstone bosons are components of dark radiation (DR) above/below the confinement
scale. These light fields increase the effective number of neutrinos by δN
eff
0.59 above the confinement
scale for N = 2, resolving the tension in the measurements of the Hubble constant by Planck and
Hubble Space Telescope if the confinement scale is 1eV. DM and DR continuously scatter with each
other via the hidden U(1) gauge interaction, which suppresses the matter power spectrum and results
in a smaller structure growth rate. The DM sector couples to the Standard Model sector through the
exchange of a real singlet scalar mixing with the Higgs boson, which makes it possible to probe our
model in DM direct detection experiments. Variants of this model are also discussed, which may offer
alternative ways to investigate this scenario.
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
Cold Dark Matter (CDM) has been one of the main paradigms
to account for the missing mass in our Universe. It provides a
consistent theoretical framework and viable explanations for the
compelling patterns observed in cosmic microwave background
(CMB), large scale structure (LSS), galactic rotation curves, and so
on. On top of its success, various microscopic models of CDM have
been proposed, most of which modify the ultraviolet behavior of
the Standard Model (SM) with new, weakly-interacting degrees of
freedom. In these models, physics after Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
(BBN) essentially does not change from the standard cosmology
since CDM decoupled earlier, except rare late-time annihilation
and/or possible decay of DM.
The
framework of CDM, however, does not fully determine par-
ticle
contents and interactions in DM models, which leave a plenty
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: natsumi@hep-th.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (N. Nagata).
of freedom for model building. For instance, we may consider
a CDM model which contains extra stable particles besides DM
and/or some interactions that are less relevant to the thermal relic
abundance of DM particles. In this paper, we discuss a scenario
where DM interacts with other very light particles even after the
BBN time. These light particles behave as dark radiation (DR) in the
Universe. The motivation for such a scenario is twofold: theoreti-
cally
and observationally. On the theory side, DM–DR interactions
are actually found in various models, such as hidden charged DM
[1–12], atomic DM [13–15], composite DM [16–21], and so on. Our
model provides a simple example for such models, which may be
embedded into a more fundamental theoretical framework.
On
the observation side, such a scenario could help to re-
solve
some controversies in the CDM paradigm [22,23]; for exam-
ple,
some recent models [24–28] may relax the tensions in the
Hubble constant H
0
and the structure growth rate σ
8
obtained
in the Planck and other low red-shift measurements. The lat-
est
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data [29] gives H
0
= 73.24 ±
1.74 km s
−1
Mpc
−1
, which is about 3σ larger than the Planck
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2017.08.065
0370-2693/
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.