A theory for scotogenic dark matter stabilised by residual gauge symmetry

Abstract

Dark matter stability can result from a residual matter-parity symmetry, following naturally from the spontaneous breaking of the gauge symmetry. Here we explore this idea in the context of the $\mathrm{SU(3)_c \otimes SU(3)_L \otimes U(1)_X \otimes U(1)_{N}}$ electroweak extension of the standard model. The key feature of our new scotogenic dark matter theory is the use of a triplet scalar boson with anti-symmetric Yukawa couplings. This naturally implies that one of the light neutrinos is massless and, as a result, there is a lower bound for the $\rm 0\nu\beta\beta$ decay rate.