Scattering of dark pions in Sp(4) gauge theory

Analyses of astrophysical data provide first hints on the self-interactions of dark matter at low energies. Lattice calculations of dark matter theories can be used to investigate them, especially in the case of strongly interacting dark matter. We consider Sp(4) gauge theory with two fundamental fermions as a candidate theory. We compute the scattering phase shift for the scattering of two identical dark pions and determine the parameters of the effective range expansion. Our exploratory results in the supposedly most common interaction channel provide a lower limit for the dark matter mass when compared to astrophysical data. We also provide first benchmarks of velocity-weighted cross sections in the relevant nonrelativistic domain. Published by the American Physical Society 2024