Testing the light dark matter scenario of the MSSM at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of the LHC to test the light dark matter scenario within the MSSM by analyzing multi-lepton signals and simulating future collider data, setting new mass limits on the neutralino.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of current constraints and future prospects for testing the light dark matter MSSM scenario at the LHC using multi-lepton signals.

Findings

8 TeV LHC excludes a significant portion of the parameter space.

14 TeV LHC can significantly improve testing sensitivity.

Lower neutralino mass limits can reach up to 55 GeV with 300 fb^{-1} data.

Abstract

In the light dark matter (DM) scenario of the MSSM, the DM relic density puts non-trivial requirements on the spectrum of supersymmetric particles. As a result, the direct search for multi-lepton signals at the LHC has great impact on the scenario. In this work, we concentrate on the searches for sleptons and electroweak-inos at the LHC, and investigate the constraints on the light DM scenario from the 8 TeV LHC data as well as the capability of the 14 TeV LHC to test the scenario. We first get the samples of the scenario by scanning the vast parameter space of the MSSM and considering some easily available constraints, such as those from the DM relic density, the LUX experiment and the Higgs searches at colliders. Then for the surviving samples, we simulate the $2l+E_T^{miss}$ signal from slepton pair production process and the $2l+E_T^{miss}$ and $3l+E_T^{miss}$ signals from chargino and neutralino associated production processes at both the 8 TeV LHC and the 14 TeV LHC. Our simulations indicate that the 8 TeV LHC has excluded a sizable portion of the samples, and the 14 TeV LHC can be even much more powerful in testing the scenario. For example, in case that no multi-lepton signals are observed at the 14 TeV LHC, most samples of the light DM scenario will be excluded, especially a lower limit on the lightest neutralino mass will be set at 42 GeV and 44 GeV with 30 $fb^{-1}$ and 100 $fb^{-1}$ data respectively, and this limit can be further pushed up to $55\ {\rm GeV}$ with 300 $fb^{-1}$ data.