Direct and indirect probes of Goldstone dark matter

Abstract

There exists a general model framework where dark matter can be a vanilla weakly-interacting-massive-particle-like thermal relic with a mass of $\mathcal{O}(100\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV})$, but it still escapes direct detection. This happens if the dark matter particle is a Goldstone boson whose scattering with ordinary matter is suppressed at low energy due to momentum-dependent interactions. We outline general features of this type of models and analyze a simple realization of these dynamics as a concrete example. In particular, we show that although direct detection of this type of dark matter candidate is very challenging, the indirect detection can already provide relevant constraints. Future projections of the indirect-detection experiments allow for even more stringent exclusion limits and can rule out models of this type.