
Physics Letters B 768 (2017) 12–17
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Residual non-Abelian dark matter and dark radiation
P. Ko
a,b
, Yong Tang
a,c,∗
a
Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul 02455, Republic of Korea
b
Quantum Universe Center, KIAS, Seoul 02455, Republic of Korea
c
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 133-0033, Japan
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
5 November 2016
Received
in revised form 11 January 2017
Accepted
14 February 2017
Available
online 20 February 2017
Editor:
J. Hisano
We propose a novel particle physics model in which vector dark matter (VDM) and dark radiation (DR)
originate from the same non-Abelian dark sector. We show an illustrating example where dark SU(3) is
spontaneously broken into SU(2) subgroup by the nonzero vacuum expectation value (VEV) of a complex
scalar in fundamental representation of SU(3). The massless gauge bosons associated with the residual
unbroken SU(2) constitute DR and help to relieve the tension in Hubble constant measurements between
Planck and Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime, massive dark gauge bosons associated with the
broken generators are VDM candidates. Intrinsically, this non-Abelian VDM can interact with non-Abelian
DR in the cosmic background, which results in a suppressed matter power spectrum and leads to a
smaller σ
8
for structure formation.
© 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
It has been well established that about 25% of energy density
in our Universe is made of non-baryonic dark matter (DM). From
the perspective of particle physics, weakly-interacting massive par-
ticle
(WIMP) is one of the nicely motivated candidates. In WIMP
scenario, DM is in thermal equilibrium with standard model (SM)
particles at high temperature and freezes out at later time. Such
an optimistic framework has triggered enthusiastic DM searches
in direct, indirect and collider detection experiments. However, we
have to admit that so far all confirmed evidence for DM is only
from gravitational interaction, which leaves wide possibilities for
DM’s particle identities.
Recently,
there are renewed interests in interacting DM–DR
models [1–9] which could have distinguishing effects on large
scale structure. Depending on the DM–DR interactions, these ef-
fects
can be similar to baryonic acoustic oscillation or dramatically
different. Motivations for such models are at least twofold. One
is that the DR component could help to resolve the conflict be-
tween
Planck [10] and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data [11].
The other is that interaction between DM and DR can give a
smaller σ
8
for structure growth, suggested by low redshift mea-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: ytang@hep-th.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Y. Tang).
surements, such as weak lensing survey CFHTLenS [12]. These ten-
sions
have stimulated various investigations on cosmological mod-
els [6,9,13–19].
In
this paper, we propose a new scenario where DM and DR
have the same origin from a single Yang–Mills dark sector, unlike
early attempts where DM and DR have different identities [1–9].
In our framework presented below, a non-Abelian gauge group is
spontaneously broken into its non-Abelian subgroup. The mass-
less
gauge boson associated with the residual subgroup consti-
tutes
non-Abelian DR, while other massive gauge bosons make
non-Abelian VDM candidates. Naturally, VDM can interact with DR
through the original Yang–Mills gauge interactions, inducing some
observable effects on cosmology and astrophysics.
This
paper is organized as follows. In Sec. 2, we start with
an explicit example where dark SU(3) is broken to its subgroup
SU(2) by nonzero VEV of a complex scalar belonging to the funda-
mental
representation of SU(3). Then we generalize to dark SU(N)
that is broken into SU(N − 1), and give a brief proof why the
massive gauge bosons are stable and therefore make good DM
candidates. Next in Sec. 3, we discuss some phenomenologies and
constraints on such a class of models, especially on DM–DR scat-
tering,
DM self-interaction and DR’s contributions to N
eff
. Then in
Sec. 4, we estimate how DM’s relic density can be satisfied with
freeze-in process. Later in Sec. 5 we illustrate the effects on matter
power spectra in the interacting DM–DR scenario. Finally, we give
our conclusion.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2017.02.033
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
.