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arXiv · 1209.6358

Direct constraints on charged excitations of dark matter

Haipeng An·Maxim Pospelov·Josef Pradler
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Abstract

If the neutral component of weak-scale dark matter is accompanied by a charged excitation separated by a mass gap of less than ~20 MeV, WIMPs can form stable bound states with nuclei. We show that the recent progress in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay sets the first direct constraint on the exoergic reaction of WIMP-nucleus bound state formation. We calculate the rate for such process in representative models and show that the double-beta decay experiments provide unique sensitivity to a large fraction of parameter space of the WIMP doublet model, complementary to constraints imposed by cosmology and direct collider searches.

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Haipeng An, Maxim Pospelov, Josef Pradler. 2013-01-14. Direct constraints on charged excitations of dark matter. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.109.251302

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