Monojet Signatures from Heavy Colored Particles: Future Collider Sensitivities and Theoretical Uncertainties

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the future collider sensitivities to heavy colored particles producing monojet signatures, emphasizing the importance of theoretical uncertainties and the potential of higher-order calculations to distinguish particle properties.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of collider sensitivities for heavy colored particles in monojet signatures, incorporating advanced theoretical calculations and uncertainties.

Findings

Future colliders can significantly extend sensitivity to heavy colored particles.

Higher-order QCD calculations reduce theoretical uncertainties in observable predictions.

NNLO calculations can help distinguish particle quantum numbers more effectively.

Abstract

In models with colored particle $\mathcal{Q}$ that can decay into a dark matter candidate $X$, the relevant collider process $pp\to \mathcal{Q}\bar{\mathcal{Q}}\rightarrow X\bar{X}+$jets gives rise to events with significant transverse momentum imbalance. When the masses of $\mathcal{Q}$ and $X$ are very close, the relevant signature becomes monojet-like, and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) search limits become much less constraining. In this paper, we study the current and anticipated experimental sensitivity to such particles at the High-Luminosity LHC at $\sqrt{s}=14\,\mathrm{TeV}$ with $\mathcal{L}=3\,\mathrm{ab}^{-1}$ of data and the proposed High-Energy LHC at $\sqrt{s}=27\,\mathrm{TeV}$ with $\mathcal{L}=15\,\mathrm{ab}^{-1}$ of data. We estimate the reach for various Lorentz and QCD color representations of $\mathcal{Q}$. Identifying the nature of $\mathcal{Q}$ is very important to understanding the physics behind the monojet signature. Therefore, we also study the dependence of the observables built from the $pp\to\mathcal{Q}\bar{\mathcal{Q}} + j $ process on $\mathcal{Q}$ itself. Using the state-of-the-art Monte Carlo suites MadGraph5_aMC@NLO+Pythia8 and Sherpa, we find that when these observables are calculated at NLO in QCD with parton shower matching and multijet merging, the residual theoretical uncertainties are comparable to differences observed when varying the quantum numbers of $\mathcal{Q}$ itself. We find, however, that the precision achievable with NNLO calculations, where available, can resolve this dilemma.