Is Cold dark matter Higgs Bosons

Question

http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.6023

Have the hypothesis in the above article been proved ? How about the WIMPS ?

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-25 16:56 (UCT), posted by SE-user user44629

Answer 1

The proposal in that article is that the Higgs boson is ~70GeV and stable. Since the article was written, it has been discovered that the Higgs boson is ~126GeV and decays. The hypothesis has been disproven.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-25 16:56 (UCT), posted by SE-user DavePhD

Answer 2

Dark Matter candidates have to interact very weakly with the particles of the Standard Model in order to have a relic density compatible with the one measured by the Plank satellite. The Higgs boson cannot be Dark Matter, because the decay rate for a process like $H\to f\bar{f}$ is very high for a mass $m_H=126 ~\rm{GeV}$.

However, there are still some very interesting possibilities concerning scalar particles. If we want to have the correct relic density without considering extremely heavy dark matter particles, then we have to suppose the existence of a mediator that makes the connections between the Standard Model and the "Dark Sector".

Two possibilities are:

1. a very light vector boson, so-called "dark photon" (0607094),
2. a light pseudoscalar boson (0712.0016).

In particular, in most extension of the SM there are several "Higgs bosons" and maybe one of these particles can be such a mediator. Two particular examples are the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) and the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). In the later, it is possible to have a very light CP-odd particle (pseudoscalar) in addition to the Higgs boson observed at the LHC, which is identified with the lightest CP-even boson (cf. 1301.1325).

In conclusion, we know very few about dark matter and its interaction, but the possibility of having a new Higgs boson that could explain the experimental results is not completely ruled out.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-25 16:56 (UCT), posted by SE-user Melquíades

Answer 3

The Higgs potential that came out to be observed has the curious property that it is right on the line of meta-stability (see here). It has been argued by Jegerlehner that this is just what makes Higgs inflation actually viable (see here).