Dark Matter in Minimal Universal Extra Dimensions with a Stable Vacuum and the "Right" Higgs

Abstract: The recent discovery of a Higgs boson with mass of about 125 GeV, along with its striking similarity to the prediction from the Standard Model, informs and constrains many models of new physics. The Higgs mass exhausts one out of three input parameters of the minimal, five-dimensional version of universal extra dimension models, the other two parameters being the Kaluza-Klein (KK) scale and the cut-off scale of the theory. The presence of KK fermions with large coupling to the Higgs implies a short-lived electro-weak vacuum, unless the cut-off scale is at most a few times higher than the KK mass scale, providing an additional tight constraint to the theory parameter space. Here, we focus on the lightest KK particle as a dark matter candidate, and investigate the regions of parameter space where such particle has a thermal relic density in accord with the cosmological dark matter density. We find the paradoxical result that, for low enough cutoff scales consistent with vacuum stability, larger than previously thought KK mass scales become preferred to explain the dark matter abundance in the universe. We explain this phenomenon by pinpointing the additional particles which, at such low cutoffs, become close enough in mass to the dark matter candidate to coannihilate with it. We make predictions for both collider and direct dark matter searches that might soon close in on all viable theory parameter space.