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

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.

25 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables. v2: clarifying comments and few references added, matches published version

References in corpus (6)

• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• Single-top Wt-channel production matched with parton showers using the POWHEG method
• Flavored dark matter beyond Minimal Flavor Violation
• Signatures of Top Flavored Dark Matter
• Flavour violating squark and gluino decays
• Charming Dark Matter

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Charming ALPs
• Systematic approach to $B$-physics anomalies and $t$-channel dark matter
• Tasting Flavoured Majorana Dark Matter
• Constraints on spin-0 dark matter mediators and invisible Higgs decays using ATLAS 13 TeV $pp$ collision data with two top quarks and missing transverse momentum in the final state
• t-channel dark matter at the LHC -- a whitepaper
• Flavoured Majorana Dark Matter then and now: From freeze-out scenarios to LHC signatures
• Probing bottom-associated production of a TeV scale scalar decaying to a top quark and dark matter at the LHC
• The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC