Skew-flavored dark matter

Abstract

We explore a novel flavor structure in the interactions of dark matter with the Standard Model. We consider theories in which both the dark matter candidate, and the particles that mediate its interactions with the Standard Model fields, carry flavor quantum numbers. The interactions are skewed in flavor space, so that a dark matter particle does not directly couple to the Standard Model matter fields of the same flavor, but only to the other two flavors. This framework respects minimal flavor violation and is, therefore, naturally consistent with flavor constraints. We study the phenomenology of a benchmark model in which dark matter couples to right-handed charged leptons. In large regions of parameter space, the dark matter can emerge as a thermal relic, while remaining consistent with the constraints from direct and indirect detection. The collider signatures of this scenario include events with multiple leptons and missing energy. These events exhibit a characteristic flavor pattern that may allow this class of models to be distinguished from other theories of dark matter.