Trobada: Massive Kalb-Ramond fields as dark matter candidates

por Oscar Catá (University of Munich, Germany)

miércoles 27 may. 2015 12:00 → 13:00 Europe/Madrid

Seminar Room, 1.1.1 (IFIC)

The existence of dark matter is one of the main reasons to believe that the Standard Model of particle physics needs to be extended. While phenomenologically it is not complicated to devise scenarios which are compatible with the present bounds from indirect and direct searches, most of the models contain substantial ad hoc ingredients. In particular, the stability of the dark matter candidate is not predicted but enforced, typically through additional Z2-symmetries. In this talk I will show that this is not the case if dark matter is vectorial and described by antisymmetric rank-2 tensors. For these dark matter candidates stability follows naturally without the need to invoke symmetries other than the ones of the Standard Model, i.e., stability becomes a prediction. This is a rather unique feature of Kalb-Ramond fields. In addition, the resulting scenarios are phenomenologically viable and can easily accommodate the existing experimental constraints with a minimal set of free parameters. I will also discuss possible mechanisms to incorporate Kalb-Ramond fields into full-fledged UV-complete theories of dark matter.