New contributions to coherent neutralino-nucleus scattering

The waning of the WIMP? A review of models, searches, and constraints

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the best-motivated dark matter candidates. No conclusive signal, despite an extensive search program that combines, often in a complementary way, direct, indirect, and collider probes, has been detected so far. This situation might change in near future due to the advent of one/multi-TON Direct Detection experiments. We thus, find it timely to provide a review of the WIMP paradigm with focus on a few models which can be probed at best by these facilities. Collider and Indirect Detection, nevertheless, will not be neglected when they represent a complementary probe.

The pMSSM10 after LHC run 1

We present a frequentist analysis of the parameter space of the pMSSM10, in which the following ten soft SUSY-breaking parameters are specified independently at the mean scalar top mass scale [Formula: see text]: the gaugino masses [Formula: see text], the first-and second-generation squark masses [Formula: see text], the third-generation squark mass [Formula: see text], a common slepton mass [Formula: see text] and a common trilinear mixing parameter A, as well as the Higgs mixing parameter [Formula: see text], the pseudoscalar Higgs mass [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], the ratio of the two Higgs vacuum expectation values. We use the MultiNest sampling algorithm with [Formula: see text]1.2 [Formula: see text] points to sample the pMSSM10 parameter space. A dedicated study shows that the sensitivities to strongly interacting sparticle masses of ATLAS and CMS searches for jets, leptons [Formula: see text][Formula: see text] signals depend only weakly on many of the other pMSSM10 parameters. With the aid of the Atom and Scorpion codes, we also implement the LHC searches for electroweakly interacting sparticles and light stops, so as to confront the pMSSM10 parameter space with all relevant SUSY searches. In addition, our analysis includes Higgs mass and rate measurements using the HiggsSignals code, SUSY Higgs exclusion bounds, the measurements of [Formula: see text] by LHCb and CMS, other B-physics observables, electroweak precision observables, the cold dark matter density and the XENON100 and LUX searches for spin-independent dark matter scattering, assuming that the cold dark matter is mainly provided by the lightest neutralino [Formula: see text]. We show that the pMSSM10 is able to provide a supersymmetric interpretation of [Formula: see text], unlike the CMSSM, NUHM1 and NUHM2. As a result, we find (omitting Higgs rates) that the minimum [Formula: see text] with 18 degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) in the pMSSM10, corresponding to a [Formula: see text] probability of 30.8 %, to be compared with [Formula: see text] in the CMSSM (NUHM1) (NUHM2). We display the one-dimensional likelihood functions for sparticle masses, and we show that they may be significantly lighter in the pMSSM10 than in the other models, e.g., the gluino may be as light as [Formula: see text]1250 [Formula: see text] at the 68 % CL, and squarks, stops, electroweak gauginos and sleptons may be much lighter than in the CMSSM, NUHM1 and NUHM2. We discuss the discovery potential of future LHC runs, [Formula: see text] colliders and direct detection experiments.