Towards resolving strongly-interacting dark sectors at colliders

Dark sectors with strong interactions have received considerable interest. Assuming the existence of a minimally coupled dark sector which runs to strong interactions in the infrared, we address the question whether the scaling behavior of this dark sector can be observed in missing energy signatures at present and future hadron colliders. We compare these findings to the concrete case of self-interacting dark matter and demonstrate that the energy dependence of high-momentum transfer final states can in principle be used to gain information about the UV structure of hidden sectors at future hadron colliders, subject to large improvements in systematic uncertainties, which could complement proof-of-principle lattice investigations. We also comment on the case of dark Abelian $U(1)$ theories.

Figure 1

Example diagram contributing to the process. The dependence on the dark gauge group enters through the running of $\theta$ as explained in the text.

Figure 2

Ratios of monojet channel cross sections in the missing $E_T^{\text{miss}}$ spectra for (a) varying gauge groups with the dark quarks in the fundamental representation, (b) $SU(5)$ with the dark quarks in varying representations, and (c) the $U(1)$ model with varying values for the dark coupling $g$ fixed at $M_Z$. We fix $g_d=g_S$ at $M_Z$ as the dark gauge sector boundary condition.

Figure 3

100 TeV signal and background distributions that feed into the confidence level calculation detailed in the text.

Figure 4

CLs hypothesis test detailed in the text, only assuming statistical uncertainties.

Figure 5

Ratios of monojet channel cross sections in the missing $E_T^{\text{miss}}$ spectra for (a) varying gauge groups with the dark quarks in the fundamental representation, and (b) $SU(5)$ with the dark quarks in varying representations. The value of $g_d$ was fixed by requiring ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_d\simeq 0.5\mathrm{GeV}$.