Torsion as a Dark Matter Candidate from the Higgs Portal

Abstract

Torsion is a metric-independent component of gravitation, which may provide a more general geometry than the one taking place within general relativity. On the other hand torsion could lead to interesting phenomenology in both particle physics and cosmology. In the present work it is shown that a torsion field interacting with the SM Higgs doublet and having a negligible coupling to SM fermions is protected from decaying by a $Z_2$ symmetry, and therefore becomes a promising Dark Matter (DM) candidate. In order to check the consistency of this scenario we evaluate the DM relic density and explore direct DM detection and collider constraints on this model. It turns out that in the model when the Higgs boson is only partly responsible for the generation of torsion mass, there is a region of parameter space where torsion contributes 100% to the DM budget of the Universe. Furthermore, we show that the LHC currently has a limited sensitivity to the torsion parameter space via mono-jet signature and will be able to considerably improve its coverage of the torsion parameter space with the projected high luminosity.