Testing ATLAS Diboson Excess with Dark Matter Searches at LHC

TL;DR

This paper proposes using dark matter search strategies at the LHC, specifically Z boson decays into neutrinos, to test the ATLAS diboson excess, offering a novel approach to explore potential new physics signals.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to test the ATLAS diboson excess via dark matter searches focusing on Z to neutrinos decay mode, connecting collider anomalies with dark matter detection.

Findings

Dark matter searches can robustly probe the excess with current 8 TeV LHC data.

Optimized dark matter search strategies improve sensitivity to the resonance.

Current constraints already provide meaningful limits on the excess hypothesis.

Abstract

The ATLAS collaboration has recently reported a 2.6 sigma excess in the search for a heavy resonance decaying into a pair of weak gauge bosons. Only fully hadronic final states are being looked for in the analysis. If the observed excess really originates from the gauge bosons' decays, other decay modes of the gauge bosons would inevitably leave a trace on other exotic searches. In this paper, we propose the use of the Z boson decay into a pair of neutrinos to test the excess. This decay leads to a very large missing energy and can be probed with conventional dark matter searches at the LHC. We discuss the current constraints from the dark matter searches and the prospects. We find that optimizing these searches may give a very robust probe of the resonance, even with the currently available data of the 8 TeV LHC.