Protophobic Light Vector Boson as a Mediator to the Dark Sector

Abstract

The observation of a protophobic 16.7 MeV vector boson has been reported by a ${}^8$Be nuclear transition experiment. Such a new particle could mediate between the Standard Model and a dark sector, which includes the dark matter. In this paper, we show some simple models of the dark matter which satisfy the thermal relic abundance under the current experimental bounds from the direct and the indirect detections. In a model, it is found that an appropriate self-scattering cross section to solve the small scale structure puzzles can be achieved.

Comments: 7 pages, 7 figures; version published in PRD