Noble dark matter: Surprising elusiveness of dark baryons

Dark matter could be a baryonic composite of stronglyc upled constituents transforming under SU(2)L. We classify the SU(2)L representations of baryons in a class of simple confining dark sectors and find that the lightest state can be a pure singlet or a singlet that mixes with other neutral components of SU(2)L representations, which strongly suppresses the dark matter candidate’s interactions with the Standard Model. We focus on models with a confining SU(Nc) and heavy dark quarks constituting vectorlike Nf-plet of SU(2)L. For benchmark Nc and Nf, we calculate baryon mass spectra, incorporating electroweak gauge boson exchange in the nonrelativistic quark model, and demonstrate that above TeV mass scales, dark matter is dominantly a singlet state. The combination of this singlet nature with the recently discovered H-parity results in an inert state analogous to noble gases, hence we coin the term noble dark matter. Our results can be understood in the nonrelativistic effective theory that treats the dark baryons as elementary states, where we find singlets accompanying triplets, 5-plets, or more exotic representations. This generalization of WIMP-like theories is more difficult to find or rule out than dark matter models that include only a single SU(2)L multiplet (such as a wino), motivating new searches in colliders and a reanalysis of direct and indirect detection prospects in astrophysical observations. Published by the American Physical Society 2025