Theory Working Group

Heavy spin-2 Dark Matter

by Mikael von Strauss (Nordita)

Europe/Stockholm
Nordita 132:028

Nordita 132:028

Description
In this talk I will present and discuss a recent proposal which affirms that observations related to dark matter (DM) may be due to the existence in nature of a massive spin-2 particle. The study of massive spin-2 particles falls within the recently constructed class of so called ghost free bimetric theories, which has in its spectrum a massless and a massive spin-2 particle. In certain parameter regimes the massive spin-2 effectively decouple so that the theory can properly be viewed as that of a gravitating massive spin-2. We will see that in this case the massive spin-2 naturally has the desired properties for explaining the DM abundance, hence being a viable DM candidate. Additionally, the massless spin-2 behaves in the standard fashion of GR and is the main source for gravitational interactions of ordinary matter. We will discuss some of the virtues and shortcomings of the resulting theory vis-a-vis observations. Related papers: arXiv:1607.03497, arXiv:1604.08564