Determining the Mass of Dark Matter Particles with Direct Detection Experiments

In this article I review two data analysis methods for determining the mass (and eventually the spin-independent cross section on nucleons) of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with positive signals from direct Dark Matter detection experiments: a maximum likelihood analysis with only one experiment and a model-independent method requiring at least two experiments. Uncertainties and caveats of these methods will also be discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, 1 reference added, typos fixed, published version, to appear in the NJP Focus Issue on "Dark Matter and Particle Physics

Loop induced Higgs and Z boson couplings to Neutralinos and implications for collider and Dark Matter searches

We calculate the one-loop induced couplings of two gaugino-like neutralinos to the $Z$ and Higgs bosons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. These couplings, which vanish at the tree level, can be generated through loops involving fermions and sfermions. We show that, while the neutralino contribution to the invisible $Z$ boson decay width remains small, the loop induced couplings to the lightest Higgs boson might be sufficiently large to yield a rate of invisible decays of this Higgs boson that should be detectable at future $e^+e^-$ colliders. We also study the implications of these couplings for direct searches of Dark Matter and show that they can modify appreciably the neutralino-nucleon elastic cross section for some parameter range.Comment: LaTeX with 6 (e)ps and 2 axodraw figures, 25 pages in total; axodraw.sty is included v.2: Added one figure and some discussions; version to appear in PR

Exploring compressed supersymmetry with same-sign top quarks at the Large Hadron Collider

In compressed supersymmetry, a light top squark naturally mediates efficient neutralino pair annihilation to govern the thermal relic abundance of dark matter. I study the LHC signal of same-sign leptonic top-quark decays from gluino and squark production, which follows from gluino decays to top plus stop followed by the stop decaying to a charm quark and the LSP in these models. Measurements of the numbers of jets with heavy-flavor tags in the same-sign lepton events can be used to confirm the origin of the signal. Summed transverse momentum observables provide an estimate of an effective superpartner mass, which is correlated with the gluino mass. Measurements of invariant mass endpoints from the visible products of gluino decays do not allow direct determination of superpartner masses, but can place constraints on them, including lower bounds on the gluino mass as a function of the top-squark mass.Comment: 22 pages. v2: Discussion of competition between 2-body and 4-body stop decays corrected. References adde

Loss maps of RHIC

State-of-the-art tracking tools were recently developed at CERN to study the cleaning efficiency of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collimation system . These tools are fully transportable, meaning that any accelerator lattice that includes a collimation systemcan be simulated. Each of the two Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) beam lines features a multi-stage collimation system, therefore dedicated datasets from RHIC operations with proton beams can be used to benchmark the tracking codes and assess the accuracy of the predicted hot spots along the LHC

Virtual Photon Strucutre Functions and the Parton Content of the Electron

We point out that in processes involving the parton content of the photon the usual effective photon approximation should be modified. The reason is that the parton content of virtual photons is logarithmically suppressed compared to real photons. We describe this suppression using several simple, physically motivated ans\"atze. Although the parton content of the electron in general no longer factorizes into an electron flux function and a photon structure function, it can still be expressed as a single integral. Numerical examples are given for the \eplem\ collider TRISTAN as well as the $ep$ collider HERA.Comment: 16 pages and 3 figures (available from DREES@WSICPHEN as topdraw or PS files); LaTeX with equation.sty; MAD/PH/819, BU 94-0

Determining Ratios of WIMP-Nucleon Cross Sections from Direct Dark Matter Detection Data

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the leading candidates for Dark Matter. So far the usual procedure for constraining the WIMP-nucleon cross sections in direct Dark Matter detection experiments have been to fit the predicted event rate based on some model(s) of the Galactic halo and of WIMPs to experimental data. One has to assume whether the spin-independent (SI) or the spin-dependent (SD) WIMP-nucleus interaction dominates, and results of such data analyses are also expressed as functions of the as yet unknown WIMP mass. In this article, I introduce methods for extracting information on the WIMP-nucleon cross sections by considering a general combination of the SI and SD interactions. Neither prior knowledge about the local density and the velocity distribution of halo WIMPs nor about their mass is needed. Assuming that an exponential-like shape of the recoil spectrum is confirmed from experimental data, the required information are only the measured recoil energies (in low energy ranges) and the number of events in the first energy bin from two or more experiments.Comment: 33 pages, 20 eps figures; v2: typos fixed, references added and updated, revised version for publicatio

Atmospheric Neutrino Anomaly and Supersymmetric Inflation

A detailed investigation of hybrid inflation and the subsequent reheating process is performed within a mu problem solving supersymmetric model based on a left-right symmetric gauge group. The process of baryogenesis via leptogenesis is especially studied. For mu and tau neutrino masses consistent with the small angle MSW resolution of the solar neutrino problem and the recent results of the SuperKamiokande experiment, we show that maximal mu-tau neutrino mixing can be achieved. The required value of the relevant coupling constant is, however, quite small (of the order 10^{-6}).Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

SUSY QCD Corrections to Higgs Pair Production from Bottom Quark Fusion

We present a complete next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation for the total cross section for inclusive Higgs pair production via bottom-quark fusion at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and the minimal supergravity model (mSUGRA). We emphasize the contributions of squark and gluino loops (SQCD) and the decoupling properties of our results for heavy squark and gluino masses. The enhanced couplings of the b quark to the Higgs bosons in supersymmetric models with large tanb yield large NLO SQCD corrections in some regions of parameter space.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure

Zeroing in on Supersymmetric Radiation Amplitude Zeros

Radiation amplitude zeros have long been used to test the Standard Model. Here, we consider the supersymmetric radiation amplitude zero in chargino-neutralino associated production, which can be observed at the luminosity upgraded LHC. Such an amplitude zero only occurs if the neutralino has a large wino fraction and hence this observable can be used to determine the neutralino eigenstate content. We find that this observable can be measured by comparing the p_T spectrum of the softest lepton in the trilepton $\chi_1^\pm \chi_2^0$ decay channel to that of a control process such as $\chi_1^+ \chi_1^-$ or $\chi_2^0 \chi_2^0$. We test this technique on a previously generated model sample of the 19 dimensional parameter space of the phenomenological MSSM, and find that it is effective in determining the wino content of the neutralino.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Inclusive One- and Two-Jet Cross sections in γγ\gamma\gamma Reactions at e+e−e^+e^- Colliders

We have calculated inclusive one-- and two--jet production in photon--photon collisions superimposing direct, single resolved and double resolved cross sections for center of mass energies of the LEP1, LEP2 and NLC range. The direct and single resolved cross sections are calculated up to next--to--leading order. The double resolved two--jet cross section is calculated only in LO with a $k$ factor estimated from the NLO one--jet cross section. Various differential cross sections as functions of transverse momenta and rapidities of the jets are evaluated.Comment: 25 pages, latex, 15 figures appended as uuencoded fil