Flavored dark matter beyond Minimal Flavor Violation

Understand

We study the interplay of flavor and dark matter phenomenology for models of flavored dark matter interacting with quarks.

• We allow an arbitrary flavor structure in the coupling of dark matter with quarks.
• This coupling is assumed to be the only new source of violation of the Standard Model flavor symmetry extended by a $U(3)_\chi$ associated with the dark matter.
• We call this ansatz Dark Minimal Flavor Violation (DMFV) and highlight its various implications, including an unbroken discrete symmetry that can stabilize the dark matter.