Search at the CERN LHC for a light neutralino of cosmological interest

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for the LHC to detect a light neutralino around 10 GeV, which is relevant for dark matter searches, using an effective supersymmetric model without gaugino-mass unification.

Contribution

It introduces a specific effective MSSM framework for light neutralino searches and evaluates its detectability prospects at various LHC stages.

Findings

Potential to reconstruct neutralino properties at different LHC stages

Benchmark analysis shows feasible detection prospects

Highlights importance of non-unified gaugino masses

Abstract

We address the problem of a search at the LHC for a neutralino whose mass is around 10 GeV, i.e. in the range of interest for present data of direct search for dark matter particles in the galactic halo. This light neutralino is here implemented in an effective Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model at the electroweak scale without requirement of a gaugino-mass unification at a grand unification scale. Within this model we select a representative benchmark and determine its prospects of reconstructing the main features of the model at different stages of the LHC runs.