Sp(4) SIMP Dark Matter on the Lattice
Fabian Zierler, Axel Maas
Abstract
The Strongly Interacting Massive Particle (SIMP) paradigm has recently been increasingly studied. It provides Dark Matter (DM) candidates as pseudo-Goldstone bound-states of dark fermions under a new gauge group. In this scenario freeze-out occurs through $3 \to 2$ dark matter self-annihilation and points to DM particles with masses of $O(100 \text{ MeV})$. We study the spectrum of the lightest mesons of $Sp(4)$ gauge theory with two massive non-degenerate fundamental Dirac fermions using lattice gauge theory. The theory has a total of five pseudo-Goldstone bosons which can self-annihilate. In particular, we investigate the breaking of the flavor symmetry when making the fermions non-degenerate. We report that one pseudo-Goldstone is lighter than the others while the remaining heavier four pseudo-Goldstones are still mass-degenerate.