Supersymmetric Dark Matter after LHC Run 1

TL;DR

This paper examines how different supersymmetric mechanisms for neutralino dark matter can be explored through future LHC and direct detection experiments, highlighting the complementarity of these approaches.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how upcoming collider and direct detection experiments can jointly probe various MSSM dark matter scenarios.

Findings

Stau_1 coannihilation regions can be explored at the LHC.

H/A funnel and focus-point regions are accessible via direct detection.

Chargino_1 coannihilation dominates in pMSSM10, with prospects for both collider and direct searches.

Abstract

Different mechanisms operate in various regions of the MSSM parameter space to bring the relic density of the lightest neutralino, neutralino_1, assumed here to be the LSP and thus the Dark Matter (DM) particle, into the range allowed by astrophysics and cosmology. These mechanisms include coannihilation with some nearly-degenerate next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) such as the lighter stau (stau_1), stop (stop_1) or chargino (chargino_1), resonant annihilation via direct-channel heavy Higgs bosons H/A, the light Higgs boson h or the Z boson, and enhanced annihilation via a larger Higgsino component of the LSP in the focus-point region. These mechanisms typically select lower-dimensional subspaces in MSSM scenarios such as the CMSSM, NUHM1, NUHM2 and pMSSM10. We analyze how future LHC and direct DM searches can complement each other in the exploration of the different DM mechanisms within these scenarios. We find that the stau_1 coannihilation regions of the CMSSM, NUHM1, NUHM2 can largely be explored at the LHC via searches for missing E_T events and long-lived charged particles, whereas their H/A funnel, focus-point and chargino_1 coannihilation regions can largely be explored by the LZ and Darwin DM direct detection experiments. We find that the dominant DM mechanism in our pMSSM10 analysis is chargino_1 coannihilation: {parts of its parameter space can be explored by the LHC, and a larger portion by future direct DM searches.