Impact of cosmological and astrophysical constraints on dark matter simplified models

TL;DR

This review examines how cosmological and astrophysical constraints impact dark matter simplified models, highlighting the complementarity of various detection methods and discussing the models' limitations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification of dark matter simplified models and analyzes the combined constraints from relic density, direct, indirect, and collider searches.

Findings

Collider and astrophysical searches are highly complementary in constraining models.

Certain parameter regions are more effectively probed by specific detection methods.

The validity and limitations of simplified models are critically assessed.

Abstract

Studies of dark matter models lie at the interface of astrophysics, cosmology, nuclear physics and collider physics. Constraining such models entails the capability to compare their predictions to a wide range of observations. In this review, we present the impact of global constraints to a specific class of models, called dark matter simplified models. These models have been adopted in the context of collider studies to classify the possible signatures due to dark matter production, with a reduced number of free parameters. We classify the models that have been analysed so far and for each of them we review in detail the complementarity of relic density, direct and indirect searches with respect to the LHC searches. We also discuss the capabilities of each type of search to identify regions where individual approaches to dark matter detection are the most relevant to constrain the model parameter space. Finally we provide a critical overview on the validity of the dark matter simplified models and discuss the caveats for the interpretation of the experimental results extracted for these models.