Direct detection of pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone dark matter with light mediator

Understand

It has been found that a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson dark matter suppresses the amplitude for elastic scattering with nuclei in non-relativistic limit, and thus can naturally evade the strong constraint of dark matter direct detection experiments.

• In this paper, we show that non-zero elastic scattering cross section can be induced if the mediator mass is as small as momentum transfer.
• The predicted recoil energy spectrum can differ from that for usual thermal dark matter.
• Together with the relevant constraints such as thermal relic abundance, indirect detection and Higgs decays, we investigate the detectability through the current and future dark matter direct detection experiments.