Generalized blind spots for dark matter direct detection in the 2HDM

Abstract

In this paper we study the presence of generalized blind spots, i.e. regions of the parameter space where the spin-independent cross section for dark matter direct detection is suppressed, in the context of a generic 2HDM and a minimal fermionic Higgs-portal dark sector. To this end, we derive analytical expressions for the couplings of the dark matter to the light and heavy Higgses, and thus for the blind spot solutions. Unlike the case of a standard Higgs sector, blind spots can occur even without a cancellation between different contributions, while keeping unsuppressed and efficient the annihilation processes in the early Universe involving Higgs states. As a consequence, the allowed parameter space is dramatically enhanced.

Latin American Strategy for Research Infrastructures for High Energy, Cosmology, Astroparticle Physics LASF4RI for HECAP

“…The community is ripe to move to the next step of strongly supporting new developments of experimental groups within and beyond the currents efforts. Latin American scientists have played a relevant role in both formulating and studying simplified WIMP-like DM scenarios [2][3][4][5][6][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57], , [79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88]. At the same time, in many theoretical studies across high energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology Latin American communities have been dedicated to explore DM solutions based on axions, ALPs , dark photon particles [89][90][91][92][93], and more general ULDM [94][95][96][97][98], including a recent review [99].…”

Exploring direct detection suppressed regions in a simple 2-scalar mediator model of scalar dark matter

“…However, there still exist allowed regions, including regions referred to as blind spots which are due to cancellations in the direct detection cross section amplitudes. This has been explored in a number of papers, for example [10,20,21,23,[52][53][54][55][56][57]. In addition a e-mail: jerome.claude@carleton.ca b e-mail: godfrey@physics.carleton.ca (corresponding author) to the blind spots mechanism, other mechanisms exist that suppress direct detection cross sections which we discuss below.…”

“…Many Higgs portal models have a second scalar that mixes with the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson [7,9,10,12,14,17,[20][21][22][23]25,26,38,54,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64]. The mechanism leading to blind spots in such models is the destructive interference between the Higgs-like scalar and the second scalar in the direct detection cross section amplitude [9,10,12,17,20,21,23,26,54,61,63]. Given that detecting dark matter is the focus of a broad experimental program, we felt it useful to further explore regions of the parameter space that give rise to suppressed direct detection cross sections.…”

“…There are, however, many possible variations of this simple picture that can give rise to cancellations in the direct detection cross section. An incomplete list of possibilities appearing in the literature consists of the scalar portal being replaced with a pseudoscalar portal [22,55,[65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72], or having a complex scalar which gives rise to a second scalar portal [20,26,26,57,73,74], a two Higgs doublet model [22,23,55,63,64,[69][70][71][74][75][76][77], higher Higgs representations [78], or supersymmetric models [22,52,54,[79][80][81][82]. Before proceeding, we note that, given that we simply want to push the simplest of models as far as we could, we haven't dealt with the issue of UV completeness.…”

Exploring Direct Detection Suppressed Regions in a Simple 2-Scalar Mediator Model of Scalar Dark Matter

“…However, there still exist allowed regions, including regions referred to as blind spots which are due to cancellations in the direct detection cross section amplitudes. This has been explored in a number of papers, for example [10,20,21,23,[52][53][54][55][56][57]. In addition to the blind spots mechanism, other mechanisms exist that suppress direct detection cross sections which we discuss below.…”