Taking a razor to dark matter parameter space at the LHC

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) has been searched for at colliders in a largely model-independent fashion by looking for an excess number of events involving a single jet, or photon, and missing energy. We investigate the possibility of looking for excesses in more inclusive jet channels. Events with multiple jets contain more information and thus more handles to increase the signal-to-background ratio. In particular, we adapt the recent CMS ``razor'' analysis from a search for supersymmetry (SUSY) to a search for DM and estimate the potential reach. The region of razor variables which are most sensitive to dark matter are not covered by the current SUSY search. We consider simplified models where DM is a Dirac fermion that couples to the quarks of the standard model (SM) through exchange of vector or axial-vector mediators or to gluons through scalar exchange. We consider both light and heavy (leading to effective contact interactions) mediators. Since the razor analysis requires multiple jets in the final state, the data set is complementary to that used for the monojet search and thus the bounds can be combined.