Effective Theory for Dark Matter and a New Force in the Dark Matter Sector

An effective theory for dark matter has recently been proposed. The key assumption is that the dark matter particle which is a Dirac fermion is protected from decaying by a global U(1) symmetry. We point out that quantum gravity effects will violate this symmetry and that the dark matter candidate thus decays very fast. In order to solve that problem, we propose to consider a local gauge symmetry which implies a new force in the dark matter sector. It is likely that this new local U(1) symmetry will need to be spontaneously broken leading for a range of the parameters of the model to a Sommerfeld enhancement of the annihilation cross-sections which is useful to explain the Pamela and ATIC results using a weakly interacting massive particle with a mass in the TeV range.