Is Dark Matter Heavy Because of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking? Revisiting Heavy Neutrinos

Abstract

A simple and well-motivated explanation for the origin of dark matter is that it consists of thermal relic particles that get their mass entirely through electroweak symmetry breaking. The simplest models implementing this possibility predict a dark matter candidate that consists of a mixture of two Dirac neutrinos with opposite isospin, and so has suppressed coupling to the Z. These models predict dark matter masses of m_{DM}~45 GeV or m_{DM}~90-95 GeV and WIMP-neutron spin-independent cross sections \sigma_{WIMP-n}~10^{-6}-10^{-8} pb. Current direct dark matter searches are probing a portion of the parameter space of these models while future experiments sensitive to \sigma_{WIMP-n}~10^{-8} pb will probe the remainder. An enhancement of the galactic halo gamma ray and positron flux coming from annihilations of these particles is also expected across the ~1-100 GeV range. The framework further suggests an environmental explanation of the hierarchy between the weak and Planck scales and of the small value of the cosmological constant relative to the weak scale.