Exceptional dark matter

We discuss fermionic dark matter candidates in non-supersymmetric E₆ Grand Unification. The exceptional group E₆ is perfectly suited for such a study, because of its unique status among the viable groups and because of the fact that we do not need to add anything by hand: dark matter candidates are contained in the fundamental representation of E₆ which contains at the same time the standard model fermions. The stability of the candidates is guaranteed by a remnant discrete symmetry that originates when the E₆ gauge symmetry is broken spontaneously. By restricting to the lowest-dimensional Higgs representations that couple to fermions and minimal fine-tuning, we end up with a viable candidate that can be produced with the correct relic abundance and could be detected in the near future.