Flavored Dark Matter in Direct Detection Experiments and at LHC

Jennifer Kile, Amarjit Soni

Published 2011-04-27Version 1

We consider the possibility that dark matter can communicate with the Standard Model fields via flavor interactions. We take the dark matter to belong to a "dark sector" which contains at least two types, or "flavors", of particles and then hypothesize that the Standard Model fields and dark matter share a common interaction which depends on flavor. As, generically, interaction eigenstates and mass eigenstates need not coincide, we consider both flavor-changing and flavor-conserving interactions. These interactions are then constrained by meson decays, kaon mixing, and current collider bounds, and we examine their relevance for direct detection and LHC.