Probing Light Dark Matter with a Hadrophilic Scalar Mediator

Understand

We investigate the thermal cosmology and terrestrial and astrophysical phenomenology of a sub-GeV hadrophilic dark sector.

• The specific construction explored in this work features a Dirac fermion dark matter candidate interacting with a light scalar mediator that dominantly couples to the up-quark.
• The correct freeze-out relic abundance may be achieved via dark matter annihilation directly to hadrons or through secluded annihilation to scalar mediators.
• A rich and distinctive phenomenology is present in this scenario, with probes arising from precision meson decays, proton beam dump experiments, colliders, direct detection experiments, supernovae, and nucleosynthesis.