Effects of dark atom excitations

Abstract

New stable quarks and charged leptons may exist and be hidden from detection, as they are bound by Coulomb interaction in neutral dark atoms of composite dark matter. This possibility leads to fundamentally new types of indirect effects related to the excitation of such dark atoms followed by their electromagnetic de-excitation. Stable -2 charged particles, bound to primordial helium in O-helium (OHe) atoms, represent the simplest model of dark atoms. Here we consider the structure of OHe atomic levels which is a necessary input for the indirect tests of such composite dark matter scenarios, and we give the spectrum of electromagnetic transitions from the levels excited in OHe collisions.

Comments: Invited contribution to the special issue of Modern Physics Letters A "Indirect dark matter searches"