What exactly are super WIMPs?

Question

I recently got confused (and slightly annoyed by the lack of technical details) when reading a popular article (authored by Jonathan Feng and Mark Trodden) introducing the concept of super WIMPs.

The article characterized super WIMPs (without giving more detailed explanations) as follows:

• WIMPs could probably decay to so-called super WIMPs, which would only gravitationally interact with visible matter

• different kinds of super WIMP particles could interact via additional newly postulated weak "dark forces" ( = gauge bosons ?) with each other

• this kind of dark matter particles can probably interact with dark energy ( how? What is dark energy in this particular scenarios suposed to be? )

• the authors vaguely stated the super WIMP models are some kind of extensions of supersymmetric models that lead to the "ordinary" WIMPs

From this characterization I really dont get what super WIMPs are suposed to be so my question is:

What are the underlying theoretical ideas behind these phenomenological models? Are they derived in some "top down" approach from high energy theories or is some "buttom up" extension of something like the MSSM for example applied ?

And I would appreciate a technically more accurate description of the super WIMP particles and their interactions.

Comments

It would help if you linked to the article or paper.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user Mitchell Porter

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@MitchellPorter Ok, I`ve added the link and the names ot the authors, but unfortunately it is in German and behind a paywall. I own only a "hard copy" of the corresponding Spektrum der Wissenschaft Dossier I`ve bought ... :-/

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user Dilaton

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They are usually not top down or bottom up, but wild guesses.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user Ron Maimon

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Possibly the (assumed) supersymetric partners of the (assumed) WIMPy content of the dark matter? In all seriousness just offering up a name gives your audience nothing to get much traction from.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user dmckee

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@dmckee Yes, that in the article was not much more than the name and a very vague descripten is exactly what annoyed me too ... As I understood it the super WIMPs they are talking about should be something else than the "usual" supersymmetric WIMPs.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user Dilaton

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The English-language version is scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-worlds

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user Mitchell Porter

Answer 1

I think you're being a bit hard on Scientific American. It is a popular (if slightly geeky) magazine so you wouldn't expect its articles to have all the gory details.

The best way to find info about areas like this is to search arxiv.org. For example googling for "super wimp site:arxiv.org/abs" finds http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0432 and this looks like a good place to start.

There have been various suggestions for particles that only interact by the gravitational force. One example is the sterile neutrino.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-03-17 03:20 (UCT), posted by SE-user John Rennie