Naturally-coupled dark sectors

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/GALAXIES9020033

The dark sector, composed of fields that are neutral under the standard model (SM) gauge group, can couple to the SM through the Higgs, hypercharge and neutrino portals, and pull the SM towards its scale by loop corrections. This instability, which is not possible to prevent in the known SM completions, such as supersymmetry, due to the sizable couplings to the SM, calls for alternative mechanisms that can neutralize sensitivities of the SM to the dark sector scale and to the ultraviolet cutoff above it. Here we review such a mechanism in which incorporation of gravity into the SM predicts the existence of a dark sector and allows it to be naturally coupled to the SM. We discuss and illustrate salient processes that can probe the naturally coupled dark sectors.