Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone dark matter from gauged U(1) _B−L symmetry

A pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) is an attractive candidate for dark matter since the current severe limits of dark matter direct detection experiments are naturally evaded by its nature. We construct a model with pNGB dark matter based on a gauged U (1)_B−L symmetry, where no adhoc global symmetry is assumed. The model keeps natural suppression mechanism for the dark matter direct detection cross section. On the other hand, the pNGB can decay through the new high scale suppressed operators. We show that the pNGB has long enough lifetime to be a dark matter in the wide range of the parameter space of the model. The thermal relic abundance of pNGB dark matter can be fit with the observed value against the constraints on the dark matter decays from the cosmic-ray observations.