Lanterna Rally

Author: Jeffrey Paul Hutchinson

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781321362862

The 'WIMP miracle' for the relic abundance of thermal dark matter motivates weak scale dark matter with renormalizable couplings to standard model particles. This work examines minimal models with such couplings that explain dark matter as a thermal relic. The models contain a singlet dark matter particle with cubic renormalizable couplings between standard model particles and `partner' particles with the same gauge quantum numbers as the standard model particle. The dark matter has spin 0, 1/2, or 1, and may or may not be its own antiparticle. Each model has 3 parameters: the masses of the dark matter and standard model partners, and the cubic coupling. Requiring the correct relic abundance gives a 2-dimensional parameter space where collider and direct detection constraints can be directly compared. This work focuses on the case of dark matter interactions with quarks and leptons.For quark models, collider and direct detection searches are remarkably complementary. Direct detection limits for the cases where the dark matter is not its own antiparticle require dark matter masses to be in the multi-TeV range, where they are extremely difficult to probe in collider experiments. The models where dark matter is its own antiparticle are strongly constrained by collider searches for monojet and jets +MET signals. These models are constrained by direct detection mainly near the limit where the dark matter and partner masses are nearly degenerate, where collider searches become more difficult.In the lepton case, the most sensitive collider probe is the search for leptons + MET, while the most sensitive direct detection channel is scattering off nuclei arising from loop diagrams. Here too collider and direct detection searches are highly complementary: colliders give the only meaningful constraint when dark matter is its own antiparticle, while direct detection is generally more sensitive if the dark matter is not its own antiparticle.