Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Dark Matter Model Inspired by Grand Unification

Understand

A pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) is an attractive candidate for dark matter (DM) due to the simple evasion of the current severe limits of DM direct detection experiments.

• One of the pNGB DM models has been proposed based on a {\it gauged} $U(1)_{B-L}$ symmetry.
• The pNGB has long enough lifetime to be a DM and thermal relic abundance of pNGB DM can be fit with the observed value against the constraints on the DM decays from the cosmic-ray observations.
• The pNGB DM model can be embedded into an $SO(10)$ pNGB DM model in the framework of an $SO(10)$ grand unified theory, whose $SO(10)$ is broken to the Pati-Salam gauge group at the unified scale, and further to the Standard Model gauge group at the intermediate scale.