Composite inelastic dark matter

Peaking consistently in June for nearly eleven years, the annual modulation signal reported by DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA offers strong evidence for the identity of dark matter. DAMA's signal strongly suggest that dark matter inelastically scatters into an excited state split by O(100 keV). We pro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics letters. B 2010-09, Vol.692 (5), p.323-326
Main Authors: Alves, Daniele S.M., Behbahani, Siavosh R., Schuster, Philip, Wacker, Jay G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bosons
DAMA
Dark matter
Dark sector
Elementary particles
Exact sciences and technology
Fermions
Ground state
Inelastic dark matter
Mesons
Modulation
Nuclear physics
Physics
The physics of elementary particles and fields
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Peaking consistently in June for nearly eleven years, the annual modulation signal reported by DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA offers strong evidence for the identity of dark matter. DAMA's signal strongly suggest that dark matter inelastically scatters into an excited state split by O(100 keV). We propose that DAMA is observing hyperfine transitions of a composite dark matter particle. As an example, we consider a meson of a QCD-like sector, built out of constituent fermions whose spin–spin interactions break the degeneracy of the ground state. An axially coupled U(1) gauge boson that mixes kinetically with hypercharge induces inelastic hyperfine transitions of the meson dark matter that can explain the DAMA signal.
ISSN:0370-2693
1873-2445
DOI:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.08.006