Fake Dark Matter at Colliders

Abstract

If the dark matter (DM) consists of a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), it can be produced and studied at future collider experiments like those at the LHC. The production of collider-stable WIMPs is characterized by hard scattering events with large missing transverse energy. Here we point out that the discovery of this well-characterized DM signal may turn out to be a red herring. We explore an alternative explanation -- fake dark matter -- where the only sources of missing transverse energy are standard model neutrinos. We present examples of such models, focusing on supersymmetric models with R-parity violation. We also briefly discuss means of differentiating fake dark matter from the production of new collider-stable particles.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, revtex; references adde