Signatures of top flavour-changing dark matter

TL;DR

This paper explores how dark matter could interact with top quarks via flavour-changing processes, analyzing collider signatures and detection constraints to identify potential signals and differentiate models.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified model for top-flavour-changing dark matter interactions, detailing collider signatures and detection strategies to distinguish different flavour-changing scenarios.

Findings

Single top plus missing energy signatures at the LHC can probe these models.

Lepton charge asymmetry and charm-tagging help differentiate flavour-changing interactions.

Complementarity between collider and dark matter detection experiments enhances exploration.

Abstract

We develop the phenomenology of scenarios in which a dark matter candidate interacts with a top quark through flavour-changing couplings, employing a simplified dark matter model with an s-channel vector-like mediator. We study in detail the top-charm flavour-changing interaction, by investigating the single top plus large missing energy signature at the LHC as well as constraints from the relic density and direct and indirect dark matter detection experiments. We present strategies to distinguish between the top-charm and top-up flavour-changing models by taking advantage of the lepton charge asymmetry as well as by using charm-tagging techniques on an extra jet. We also show the complementarity between the LHC and canonical dark matter experiments in exploring the viable parameter space of the models.