Flavor portal to dark matter

Abstract

We present a class of models in which dark matter (DM) is a fermionic singlet under the Standard Model (SM) gauge group but is charged under a symmetry of flavor that acts as well on the SM fermions. Interactions between DM and SM particles are mediated by the scalar fields that spontaneously break the flavor symmetry, the so-called flavons. In the case of gauged flavor symmetries, the interactions are also mediated by the flavor gauge bosons. We first discuss the construction and the generic features of this class of models. Then a concrete example with an Abelian flavor symmetry is considered. We compute the complementary constraints from the relic abundance, direct detection experiments and flavor observables, showing that wide portions of the parameter space are still viable. Other possibilities like non-Abelian flavor symmetries can be analyzed within the same framework.