Dark matter searches at the Large Hadron Collider

One of the promising lines of investigation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a search for dark matter particles. Despite a large body of evidence for dark matter existence, its nature remains unknown. The leading hypothesis is that dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles. Collider searches for such particles are most sensitive in the case of spin-dependent interactions, and for the low masses of dark matter particles in the case of spin-independent interactions. The strategies of dark matter searches at the LHC are described, and upper limits on dark matter-nucleon cross-sections based on the experimental data collected in 2015 and 2016 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations are presented in comparison with the results of other experiments. In conclusion, the perspectives of further searches of dark matter at the LHC are discussed.

Citation: A.E. Basalaev, Yu.G. Naryshkin, Dark matter searches at the Large Hadron Collider, St. Petersburg Polytechnical State University Journal. Physics and Mathematics. 11 (1) (2018) 122 – 137. DOI: 10.18721/JPM.11112