Composite dark matter from strongly-interacting chiral dynamics

Abstract

A class of chiral gauge theories is studied with accidentally-stable pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons playing the role of dark matter (DM). The gauge group contains a vector-like dark color factor that confines at energies larger than the electroweak scale, and a U(1)D factor that remains weakly coupled and is spontaneously broken. All new scales are generated dynamically, including the DM mass, and the IR dynamics is fully calculable. We analyze minimal models of this kind with dark fermions transforming as non-trivial vector-like representations of the Standard Model (SM) gauge group. In realistic models, the DM candidate is a SM singlet and comes along with charged partners that can be discovered at high-energy colliders. The phenomenology of the lowest-lying new states is thus characterized by correlated predictions for astrophysical observations and laboratory experiments.