Theory HEP Seminar

Constraining dark matter properties using current and future direct detection experiments

Charlotte Strege

Imperial College London

Weak-scale supersymmetry offers a theoretically well-motivated solution to the dark matter problem of cosmology, by predicting the existence of WIMPs - Weakly Interactive Massive Particles -, which are today being actively searched for with several observational channels, including the LHC and direct detection experiments. In this talk, I will present new constraints on the parameters of the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cMSSM) obtained from global fits including the recent data from the LHC and the XENON100 direct detection experiment. I will discuss the impact of astrophysical and particle physics uncertainties in interpreting the results. I will also present the reach of future ton-scale direct detection experiments and illustrate how statistical fluctuations in the recoil energy spectrum can induce large systematic biases in the WIMP mass reconstruction even in a regime with hundreds of signal events. I will show how target complementarity can reduce - but not eliminate - such uncertainties.