Extracting the Dark Matter Mass from Single Stage Cascade Decays at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modified MT2 variable to measure dark matter mass in single-stage cascade decays at the LHC, aiding in constraining supersymmetric and leptophilic dark matter models.

Contribution

It proposes a new kinematic variable for dark matter mass measurement in simple cascade decays at the LHC, with analysis of statistical reach and error sources.

Findings

Mass measurement accuracy of about 10% for a 150 GeV dark matter candidate.

Effective for parent masses around 300 GeV with 100 fb^(-1) of data.

Applicable to specific supersymmetric and leptophilic dark matter scenarios.

Abstract

We explore a variant on the MT2 kinematic variable which enables dark matter mass measurements for simple, one stage, cascade decays. This will prove useful for constraining a subset of supersymmetric processes, or a class of leptophilic dark matter models at the LHC. We investigate the statistical reach of these measurements and discuss which sources of error have the largest effects. For example, we find that using only single stage cascade decays with initial state radiation, a measurement of a 150 GeV dark matter candidate can be made to O(10%) for a parent mass of 300 GeV with a production cross section of 100 fb and 100 fb^(-1) of integrated luminosity.