Dark Matter Searches with Top Quarks

TL;DR

This paper reviews the latest collider-based dark matter searches involving top quarks at the LHC, emphasizing their complementarity, recent results, theoretical interpretations, and future prospects in upcoming collider runs.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of top-quark-based dark matter searches at the LHC, including recent results, theoretical reinterpretations, and future experimental outlooks.

Findings

Recent LHC Run 2 results set new limits on dark matter models with top quarks.

Complementarity of top-quark searches with other dark matter search channels is highlighted.

Future collider prospects could probe new benchmark models and uncover novel signatures.

Abstract

Collider signatures with top quarks provide sensitive probes of dark matter (DM) production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this article, we review the results of DM searches in final states with top quarks conducted by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at the LHC, including the most recent results on the full LHC Run 2 dataset. We highlight the complementarity of DM searches in final states with top quarks with searches in other final states in the framework of various simplified models of DM. A re-interpretation of a DM search with top quarks in the context of an effective-field theory description of scalar dark energy is also discussed. Finally, we give an outlook on the potential of DM searches with top quarks in LHC Run 3, at the high-luminosity LHC, and possible future colliders. In this context, we highlight new benchmark models that could be probed by existing and future searches as well as those that predict still uncovered signatures of anomalous top-quark production and decays at the LHC.