Single-top final states as a probe of top-flavoured dark matter models at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores how single-top final states at the LHC can be used to probe flavoured dark matter models, extending current analyses and assessing discovery potential at future collider runs.

Contribution

It develops realistic LHC analyses for flavoured dark matter scenarios involving single-top signatures, enhancing parameter space coverage beyond existing methods.

Findings

Proposed analyses improve detection prospects for flavoured dark matter models.

Single-top signatures offer complementary discovery channels at the LHC.

Projected sensitivity increases with higher luminosity and energy.

Abstract

Models incorporating flavoured dark matter provide an elegant solution to the dark matter problem, evading the tight LHC and direct direction constraints on simple WIMP models. In Dark Minimal Flavour Violation, a simple framework of flavoured dark matter with new sources of flavour violation, the constraints from thermal freeze-out, direct detection experiments, and flavour physics create well-defined benchmark scenarios for these models. We study the LHC phenomenology of four such scenarios, focusing on final states where a single top quark is produced accompanied by no jets, one jet from the fragmentation of light quarks or a $b$-tagged jet. For each of these signatures we develop a realistic LHC analysis, and we show that the proposed analyses would increase the parameter space coverage for the four benchmarks, compared to existing flavour-conserving LHC analyses. Finally we show the projected discovery potential of the considered signatures for the full LHC statistics at 14 TeV, and for the High Luminosity LHC.