Distinguishing Higgs portal and neutralino dark matter via vector boson fusion
Amit Chakraborty, Tathagata Ghosh, Rafiqul Rahaman
TLDR
This paper uses VBF at LHC to distinguish Higgs portal from neutralino dark matter, leveraging distinct kinematic features and achieving >5σ differentiation.
Key contributions
- Uses VBF at LHC to distinguish Higgs portal from neutralino dark matter in the $2j + \not\! E_T$ final state.
- Leverages distinct kinematic features like jet transverse momentum and weak boson polarization for discrimination.
- Finds Higgs portal jets are less energetic transversely than neutralino DM jets due to weak boson polarization.
- Demonstrates >5σ distinguishability using $\Delta\eta$, $\Delta\phi$, and a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.
Why it matters
This research provides a crucial collider-based method to differentiate between dark matter models, specifically Higgs portal and neutralino scenarios. It advances our ability to experimentally probe the fundamental nature of dark matter at the LHC.
Original Abstract
Understanding the nature of dark matter (DM) is a fundamental challenge in particle physics. In this paper, we investigate the potential of vector boson fusion (VBF) processes at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to demonstrate, as a proof of principle, the feasibility of distinguishing between different dark matter scenarios, focusing on Higgs portal DM (HPDM) and neutralino DM in the $2j + \not\!\! E_T$ final state and exploiting the distinctive kinematic features of the VBF jets and the missing transverse energy. Our study reveals that the polarization of weak bosons in VBF plays a crucial role in shaping the transverse momentum distributions of the tagged jets, with the jets being less energetic in the transverse direction for the Higgs portal scenario compared to the neutralino scenario. In addition, the kinematic variables $Δη$ and $Δφ$ exhibit characteristic differences between the Higgs portal and neutralino DM signals, providing significant discriminating power between these scenarios. We further apply a Kolmogorov--Smirnov test using linear discriminant analysis to quantify the distinguishability of the signals and find that the Higgs portal signals can be differentiated from neutralino DM signals with a C.L. exceeding $5σ$, thereby establishing the viability of collider-based discrimination between dark matter models.
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