Andreas Goudelis

We propose simple freeze-in models where the observed dark matter abundance is explained via the decay of an electrically charged and/or coloured parent particle into Feebly Interacting Massive Particles (FIMP). The parent particle is long-lived and yields a wide variety of LHC signatures depending on its lifetime and quantum numbers. We assess the current constraints and future high luminosity reach of these scenarios at the LHC from searches for heavy stable charged particles, disappearing tracks, displaced vertices and displaced leptons. We show that the LHC constitutes a powerful probe of freeze-in dark matter and can further provide interesting insights on the validity of vanilla baryogenesis and leptogenesis scenarios.

We present a major upgrade of the micrOMEGAs dark matter code to compute the abundance of feebly interacting dark matter candidates through the freeze-in mechanism in generic extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. We develop the necessary formalism in order to solve the freeze-in Boltzmann equations while making as few simplifying assumptions as possible concerning the phase-space distributions of the particles involved in the dark matter production process. We further show that this formalism allows us to treat different freeze-in scenarios and discuss the way it is implemented in the code. We find that, depending on the New Physics scenario under consideration, the effect of a proper treatment of statistics on the predicted dark matter abundance can range from a few percent up to a factor of two, or more. We moreover illustrate the underlying physics, as well as the various novel functionalities of micrOMEGAs, by presenting several example results obtained for different dark matter models.

Motivated by grand unification considerations, we analyse a simple extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model with additional pairs of vector-like chiral supermultiplets. We focus on the so-called LND setup, which enlarges the particle content of the minimal model by two vector-like pairs of weak doublets (one pair of leptons and one pair of down-type quarks) and one vector-like pair of neutrino singlets. Imposing collider and low-energy constraints, sneutrinos and neutralinos both emerge as possible lightest supersymmetric particles and thus dark matter candidates. We perform a complete analysis of the dark sector and study the viability of these neutralino and sneutrino dark matter options. We show that cosmological considerations (the dark matter relic abundance and its direct and indirect detection signals) restrict neutralino dark matter to exhibit similar properties as in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, and impose the sneutrino dark matter candidate to be singlet-like, rather than doublet-like. Allowing the mixing of the fermionic component of the new supermultiplets with the Standard Model third generation fermions, we moreover demonstrate the existence of collider signals that are distinguishable from other, more minimal, supersymmetric scenarios by virtue of an enhanced production of events enriched in tau leptons. We furthermore show that this signature yields robust LHC signals, that could potentially be differentiated from the background in future data.

Motivated by grand unification considerations, we analyze a simple extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model with additional pairs of vector-like chiral supermultiplets. We focus on the so-called LND setup, which enlarges the particle content of the minimal model by two vector-like pairs of weak doublets (one pair of leptons and one pair of down-type quarks) and one vector-like pair of neutrino singlets. Imposing collider and low-energy constraints, sneutrinos and neutralinos both emerge as possible lightest supersymmetric particles and thus dark matter candidates. We perform a complete analysis of the dark sector and study the viability of these neutralino and sneutrino dark matter options. We show that cosmological considerations (the dark matter relic abundance and its direct and indirect detection signals) restrict neutralino dark matter to exhibit similar properties as in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, and impose the sneutrino dark matter candidate to be singlet-like, rather than doublet-like. Allowing the mixing of the fermionic component of the new supermultiplets with the Standard Model third generation fermions, we moreover demonstrate the existence of collider signals that are distinguishable from other, more minimal, supersymmetric scenarios by virtue of an enhanced production of events enriched in tau leptons. We furthermore show that this signature yields robust LHC signals, that could potentially be differentiated from the background in future data.

We propose simple freeze-in models where the observed dark matter abundance is explained via the decay of an electrically charged and/or coloured parent particle into Feebly Interacting Massive Particles (FIMP). The parent particle is long-lived and yields a wide variety of LHC signatures depending on its lifetime and quantum numbers. We assess the current constraints and future high luminosity reach of these scenarios at the LHC from searches for heavy stable charged particles, disappearing tracks, displaced vertices and displaced leptons. We show that the LHC constitutes a powerful probe of freeze-in dark matter and can further provide interesting insights on the validity of vanilla baryogenesis and leptogenesis scenarios.

We study freeze-in dark matter production in models that rely on the Clockwork mechanism to suppress the dark matter couplings to the visible sector. We construct viable scalar and fermionic dark matter models within this Clockwork FIMP scenario, with several subtleties that need to be taken into account revealed in the model-building process. We also provide analytic, semi-analytic and numerical results for the diagonalization of Clockwork-type mass matrices and briefly discuss the LHC phenomenology of the corresponding scenarios.

A bstract: We study freeze-in dark matter production in models that rely on the Clock-work mechanism to suppress the dark matter couplings to the visible sector. We construct viable scalar and fermionic dark matter models within this “Clockwork FIMP” scenario, with several subtleties that need to be taken into account revealed in the model-building process. We also provide analytic, semi-analytic and numerical results for the diagonalization of Clockwork-type mass matrices and briefly discuss the LHC phenomenology of the corresponding scenarios.

Models in which dark matter particles communicate with the visible sector through a pseudoscalar mediator are well-motivated both from a theoretical and from a phenomenological standpoint. With direct detection bounds being typically subleading in such scenarios, the main constraints stem either from collider searches for dark matter, or from indirect detection experiments. However, LHC searches for the mediator particles themselves can not only compete with -- or even supersede -- the reach of direct collider dark matter probes, but they can also test scenarios in which traditional monojet searches become irrelevant, especially when the mediator cannot decay on-shell into dark matter particles or its decay is suppressed. In this work we perform a detailed analysis of a pseudoscalar-mediated dark matter simplified model, taking into account a large set of collider constraints and concentrating on the parameter space regions favoured by cosmological and astrophysical data. We find that mediator masses above 100-200~GeV are essentially excluded by LHC searches in the case of large couplings to the top quark, while forthcoming collider and astrophysical measurements will further constrain the available parameter space.