Model-independent constraints with extended dark matter EFT

TL;DR

This paper introduces the extended dark matter effective field theory (MEFT), providing a comprehensive framework that connects collider, direct, and indirect detection constraints, revealing viable dark matter scenarios across various energy scales.

Contribution

It presents a systematic exploration of MEFT, including dynamical mediators and gauge invariance, to unify dark matter phenomenology across experiments and energy regimes.

Findings

Identification of parameter space regions with cancellations in direct detection

Discovery of allowed 'islands' in scalar mediator scenarios

Potential for dark matter detection at the high-luminosity LHC

Abstract

We systematically explore the phenomenology of the recently proposed extended dark matter effective field theory (\eDMEFT), which allows for a consistent effective description of DM scenarios across different energy scales. The framework remains applicable at collider energies and is capable of reproducing the correct relic abundance by including a dynamical mediator particle to the dark sector, while maintaining correlations dictated by gauge invariance in a `model-independent' way. Taking into account present and future constraints from direct- and indirect-detection experiments, from collider searches for missing energy and for scalar resonances in vector-boson, di-jet, and Higgs-pair final states, as well as from the relic abundance as measured by Planck, we determine viable regions in the parameter space, both for scalar and pseudoscalar mediator. In particular, we point out regions where cancellations in the direct-detection cross section appear leading to allowed islands for scalar mediators that could be missed in a naive simplified-model approach, but are present in the full $D=5$ effective theory, as well as a general opening of the parameter space due to consistently considering all operators at a given mass dimension. Thus, canonical WIMP-like scenarios can survive even the next generation of direct-detection experiments in different mass regimes, while potentially becoming testable at the high-luminosity LHC.