Probing MeV Dark Matter at low-energy colliders e⁺e^-

by Prof. Manuel Drees (Bonn University)

Tuesday Jan 17, 2006, 3:00 PM → 5:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

WAT 417 (University of Hawai'i, Manoa)

It has been suggested that the pair annihilation of Dark Matter particles χ with mass between 0.5 and 20 MeV into e⁺e^- pairs could be responsible for the excess flux (detected by the INTEGRAL satellite) of 511 keV photons coming from the central region of our galaxy. The simplest way to achieve the required cross section while respecting existing constraints is to introduce a new vector boson U with mass M_U below a few hundred MeV. We point out that over most of the allowed parameter space, the process e⁺e^- → U γ, followed by the decay of U into either an e⁺e^- pair or an invisible (ν ν or χ χ) channel, should lead to signals detectable by current B- factory experiments. A smaller, but still substantial, region of parameter space can also be probed at the Φ factory DA Φ NE.