Exploring new physics via effective interactions

TL;DR

This paper explores effective interactions of self-conjugate dark matter particles with electroweak gauge bosons, deriving constraints from relic density, indirect detection, and collider experiments, including LEP and ILC, to understand their properties.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive effective field theory analysis of dark matter interactions with electroweak bosons, calculating Wilson coefficients up to dimension-8 and assessing experimental sensitivities.

Findings

Constraints on dark matter parameters from relic density and indirect detection.

Potential for collider detection at LEP and ILC.

Effective operators can be probed via mono-photon signatures.

Abstract

We investigate self-conjugate Dark Matter (DM) particles that primarily interact with standard model electroweak gauge bosons within an effective field theoretical framework. Our analysis focuses on effective contact interactions, invariant under the standard model gauge group, between Majorana fermions, and real scalar DM, with SM neutral electroweak gauge bosons. We calculate the Wilson coefficients for interaction terms up to dimension-8 and establish constraints on the theory's parameters. These constraints are derived from the observed relic density, and indirect detection observations. We discuss the potential for dark matter-nucleon scattering in direct detection experiments. Additionally, we utilize low-energy LEP data to assess sensitivity to the pair production of low-mass ($\leq$ 80 GeV) DM particles. Furthermore, we highlight the potential of the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) in probing effective operators through the pair production of DM particles with masses $\geq$ 50 GeV in association with mono-photons.