Chiara Arina

Motivated by the measurements reported by direct detection experiments, most notably DAMA, CDMS-II, CoGeNT and Xenon10/100, we study further the constraints that might be set on some light dark matter candidates, M_DM ~ few GeV, using the Fermi-LAT data on the isotropic gamma-ray diffuse emission. In particular, we consider a Dirac fermion singlet interacting through a new Z' gauge boson, and a scalar singlet S interacting through the Higgs portal. Both candidates are WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), i.e. they have an annihilation cross-section in the pbarn range. Also they may both have a spin-independent elastic cross section on nucleons in the range required by direct detection experiments. Although being generic WIMP candidates, because they have different interactions with Standard Model particles, their phenomenology regarding the isotropic diffuse gamma-ray emission is quite distinct. In the case of the scalar singlet, the one-to-one correspondence between its annihilation cross-section and its spin-independent elastic scattering cross-section permits to express the constraints from the Fermi-LAT data in the direct detection exclusion plot, sigma_n^0--M_DM. Depending on the astrophysics, we argue that it is possible to exclude the singlet scalar dark matter candidate at 95 % CL. The constraints on the Dirac singlet interacting through a Z' are comparatively weaker.

We present a hidden Abelian extension of the Standard Model including a complex scalar as a dark matter candidate and a light scalar acting as a long range force carrier between dark matter particles. The Sommerfeld enhanced annihilation cross-section of the dark matter explains the observed cosmic ray excesses. The light scalar field also gives rise to potentially large cross-sections of dark matter on nucleon, therefore providing an interesting way to probe this model simultaneously at direct and indirect dark matter search experiments. We constrain the parameter-space of the model by taking into account CDMS-II exclusion limit as well as PAMELA and FermiLAT data.

We present a hidden Abelian extension of the standard model including a complex scalar as a dark matter candidate and a light scalar acting as a long range force carrier between dark matter particles. The Sommerfeld enhanced annihilation cross section of the dark matter explains the observed cosmic ray excesses. The light scalar field also gives rise to potentially large cross sections of dark matter on the nucleon, therefore providing an interesting way to probe this model simultaneously at direct and indirect dark matter search experiments. We constrain the parameter space of the model by taking into account the CDMS-II exclusion limit as well as PAMELA and Fermi~LAT data.

In a large class of models we show that the light scalar field responsible for the Sommerfeld enhancement in the annihilation of dark matter leads to observable direct detection rates, due to its mixing with the standard model Higgs. As a result the large annihilation cross-section of dark matter at present epoch, required to explain the observed cosmic ray anomalies, can be strongly constrained by direct searches. In particular Sommerfeld boost factors of order of a few hundred are already out of the CDMS-II upper bound at 90% confidence level for reasonable values of the model parameters.

The annual modulation observed by DAMA/NaI and DAMA/Libra may be interpreted in terms of elastic or inelastic scattering of dark matter particles. In this paper we confront these two scenarios within the framework of a very simple extension of the Standard Model, the Inert Doublet Model (IDM). In this model the dark matter candidate is a scalar, the lightest component of an extra Higgs doublet. We first revisit the case for the elastic scattering of a light scalar WIMP, M_DM~10 GeV, a scenario which requires that a fraction of events in DAMA are channelled. Second we consider the possibility of inelastic Dark Matter (iDM). This option is technically natural in the IDM, in the sense that the mass splitting between the lightest and next-to-lightest neutral scalars may be protected by a Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry. We show that candidates with a mass M_DM between ~535 GeV and ~50 TeV may reproduce the DAMA data and have a cosmic abundance in agreement with WMAP. This range may be extended to candidates as light as ~50 GeV if we exploit the possibility that the approximate PQ symmetry is effectively conserved and that a primordial asymmetry in the dark sector may survive until freeze-out.