Millicharged Atomic Dark Matter
  We present a simplified version of the atomic dark matter scenario, in which
charged dark constituents are bound into atoms analogous to hydrogen by a
massless hidden sector U(1) gauge interaction. Previous studies have assumed
that interactions between the dark sector and the standard model are mediated
by a second, massive Z' gauge boson, but here we consider the case where only a
massless gamma' kinetically mixes with the standard model hypercharge and
thereby mediates direct detection. This is therefore the simplest atomic dark
matter model that has direct interactions with the standard model, arising from
the small electric charge for the dark constituents induced by the kinetic
mixing. We map out the parameter space that is consistent with cosmological
constraints and direct searches, assuming that some unspecified mechanism
creates the asymmetry that gives the right abundance, since the dark matter
cannot be a thermal relic in this scenario. In the special case where the dark
"electron" and "proton" are degenerate in mass, inelastic hyperfine transitions
can explain the CoGeNT excess events. In the more general case, elastic
transitions dominate, and can be close to current direct detection limits over
a wide range of masses.
