We demonstrate that the condition of vacuum stability severely restricts scenarios with fermionic WIMP dark matter in the scotogenic model. The sizable Yukawa couplings that are required to satisfy the dark matter constraint via thermal freeze-out in these scenarios tend to destabilize the vacuum at scales below that of the heaviest singlet fermion, rendering the model inconsistent from a theoretical point of view. By means of a scan over the parameter space, we study the impact of these renormalization group effects on the viable regions of this model. Our analysis shows that a fraction of more than 90% of the points compatible with all known experimental constraints—including neutrino masses, the dark matter density, and lepton flavor violation—is actually inconsistent.

• Received 27 September 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.115027