Prospects for dark matter searches in the pMSSM

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for detection of neutralino dark matter in the 19-parameter phenomenological MSSM (pMSSM). We explore very wide ranges of the pMSSM parameters but pay particular attention to the higgsino-like neutralino at the ~ 1 TeV scale, which has been shown to be a well motivated solution in many constrained supersymmetric models, as well as to a wino-dominated solution with the mass in the range of 2-3 TeV. After summarising the present bounds on the parameter space from direct and indirect detection experiments, we focus on prospects for detection of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). To this end, we derive a realistic assessment of the sensitivity of CTA to photon fluxes from dark matter annihilation by means of a binned likelihood analysis for the Einasto and Navarro-Frenk-White halo profiles. We use the most up to date instrument response functions and background simulation model provided by the CTA Collaboration. We find that, with 500 hours of observation, under the Einasto profile CTA is bound to exclude at the 95% C.L. almost all of the ~ 1 TeV higgsino region of the pMSSM, effectively closing the window for heavy supersymmetric dark matter in many realistic models. CTA will be able to probe the vast majority of cases corresponding to a spin-independent scattering cross section below the reach of 1-tonne underground detector searches for dark matter, in fact even well below the irreducible neutrino background for direct detection. On the other hand, many points lying beyond the sensitivity of CTA will be within the reach of 1-tonne detectors, and some within collider reach. Altogether, CTA will provide a highly sensitive way of searching for dark matter that will be partially overlapping and partially complementary with 1-tonne detector and collider searches, thus being instrumental to effectively explore the nearly full parameter space of the pMSSM.

35 pages, 14 figures, minor corrections and citations added, version to appear in JHEP

References in corpus (35)

• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• Dark Matter Results from 225 Live Days of XENON100 Data
• Constraints on Dark Matter from Colliders
• Cosmology and Astrophysics of Minimal Dark Matter
• The Well-Tempered Neutralino
• Non-perturbative Effect on Thermal Relic Abundance of Dark Matter
• SuperIso v3.0: A program for calculating flavor physics observables in 2HDM and supersymmetry
• The Universal Rotation Curve of Spiral Galaxies. II The Dark Matter Distribution out to the Virial Radius
• Search for direct production of charginos, neutralinos and sleptons in final states with two leptons and missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Muon g-2: Review of Theory and Experiment
• Searches for electroweak production of charginos, neutralinos, and sleptons decaying to leptons and W, Z, and Higgs bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV
• Search for photon line-like signatures from Dark Matter annihilations with H.E.S.S
• Search for top squark pair production in final states with one isolated lepton, jets, and missing transverse momentum in $\sqrt{s}=$ 8 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
• Evidence for B- -> tau- nu_tau-bar with a Hadronic Tagging Method Using the Full Data Sample of Belle
• Neutrino Backgrounds to Dark Matter Searches
• Simply Unnatural Supersymmetry
• Relic densities including Sommerfeld enhancements in the MSSM
• Search for dark matter in events with a Z boson and missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
• Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV
• Blind Spots for neutralino Dark Matter in the MSSM with an intermediate m_A
• Search for strong production of supersymmetric particles in final states with missing transverse momentum and at least three b-jets at $\sqrt{s}=$ 8 TeV proton-proton collisions with the ATLAS detector
• What next for the CMSSM and the NUHM: Improved prospects for superpartner and dark matter detection
• Soft Collinear Effective Theory for Heavy WIMP Annihilation
• LHC Tests of Light Neutralino Dark Matter without Light Sfermions
• Complementarity of Dark Matter Searches in the pMSSM
• The Electroweak Sector of the pMSSM in the Light of LHC - 8 TeV and Other Data
• Mini--Review of Dark Matter: 2012
• The NUHM2 after LHC Run 1
• Fermion WIMPless Dark Matter at DeepCore and IceCube
• Regenerating WIMPs in the light of direct and indirect detection
• Higgsino Dark Matter in Nonuniversal Gaugino Mass Models
• How alive is constrained SUSY really?

Cited by in corpus (18)

• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• GUT-inspired SUSY and the muon g-2 anomaly: prospects for LHC 14 TeV
• What next for the CMSSM and the NUHM: Improved prospects for superpartner and dark matter detection
• Prospects for Annihilating Dark Matter in the inner Galactic halo by the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• The Relic Neutralino Surface at a 100 TeV collider
• The Waning of the WIMP: Endgame?
• The last refuge of mixed wino-Higgsino dark matter
• Probing WIMP particle physics and astrophysics with direct detection and neutrino telescope data
• Robustness of dark matter constraints and interplay with collider searches for New Physics
• Directional Detection of Dark Matter Using Solid-State Quantum Sensing
• $E_6$ Motivated UMSSM Confronts Experimental Data
• Dependence of accessible dark matter annihilation cross-sections on the density profiles of dwarf spheroidal galaxies with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• The hMSSM with a Light Gaugino/Higgsino Sector: Implications for Collider and Astroparticle Physics
• Confronting Dirac Fermionic Dark Matter with Recent Data
• Darkflation -- one scalar to rule them all?
• Simulation Based Inference for Efficient Theory Space Sampling: an Application to Supersymmetric Explanations of the Anomalous Muon (g-2)
• Exploring the BSM parameter space with Neural Network aided Simulation-Based Inference
• Mesotuned WIMPs and Avoided Deconfinement