Hidden Charged Dark Matter

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Abstract
We examine the possibility that dark matter is hidden, that is, neutral under all standard model gauge interactions, but charged under an exact U(1) gauge symmetry of the hidden sector. Such candidates are predicted in simple WIMPless models, supersymmetric models in which hidden dark matter has the desired thermal relic density for a wide range of masses. Hidden charged dark matter has many potentially disastrous implications for astrophysics: (1) bound state formation and Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation after chemical freeze out may destroy its relic density, (2) similar effects greatly enhance dark matter annihilation in protohalos at redshifts of z ~ 30, (3) Compton scattering off hidden photons delays kinetic decoupling, suppressing small scale structure, and (4) Rutherford scattering makes such dark matter self-interacting and collisional, potentially violating constraints from the Bullet Cluster and the observed morphology of galactic halos. We show that all of these constraints are satisfied and are consistent with the correct relic density for reasonable model parameters and dark matter masses in the range 1 GeV < m_X < 10 TeV. At the same time, signals of this kind of dark matter may be within the reach of future observations, specifically those pertaining to the substructure in galactic dark matter halos and the dark matter density profile in the cores of small galaxies. These models therefore provide a viable and well-motivated framework for collisional dark matter with Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation, with strong implications for astrophysics and dark matter searches.

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