Speaker
Description
Sub-GeV dark matter has emerged as a compelling alternative to the WIMP paradigm, motivated by persistent null results in conventional searches. However, s-wave annihilating candidates in this mass range are severely constrained by indirect-detection bounds. Inelastic dark matter scenarios provide a natural way to evade these limits, especially when the excited state is long-lived. In this talk, I present a detailed study of pseudo-Dirac inelastic dark matter interacting through a dark photon, emphasizing the phenomenological impact of parity-violating interactions.
Parity violation generically induces small diagonal couplings that significantly alter the late-time population of excited states. A precise determination of this population is therefore essential to reliably assess experimental constraints. To this end, I solve the integrated Boltzmann equation governing the excited-state fraction, consistently accounting for up- and down-scattering with electrons, dark sector conversion processes, and the thermal evolution of the dark sector.
Using the resulting excited-state abundance, I revisit constraints from indirect detection, direct detection, self-interactions, and collider searches. I show that parity-violating interactions can reopen wide regions of parameter space that are otherwise excluded in parity-conserving scenarios, particularly for keV–MeV mass splittings. I also discuss the prospects for probing these models at future experiments, highlighting the sensitivity of LDMX.
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