2003/08/07 by John Ellis, Keith A. Olive, Yudi Santoso +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.69.015005
published as Phys.Rev.D69:015005,2004 · 22 pages, 22 figures
arxiv created 2003/08/07 · openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The requirement that the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) remain an acceptable effective field theory up to energies beyond the weak scale constrains the sparticle spectrum, and hence the permissible ranges of cold dark matter neutralino-proton cross sections. Specifically, squarks are generally much heavier than sleptons if no tachyons are to appear before the grand unified theory (GUT) scale \ensuremath∼1016GeV, or even before 10 TeV. We display explicitly the allowed ranges of effective squark and slepton masses at the weak scale, and the cross-section ranges allowed if the MSSM is to remain valid without tachyons up to 10 TeV or the GUT scale. The allowed areas in the cross-section--mass plane for both spin-independent and spin-dependent scattering are significantly smaller than would be allowed if the MSSM were required to be valid only around the weak scale. In addition to a reduction in the maximum cross section, the upper limit on the neutralino mass is greatly reduced when tachyons are avoided, particularly for smaller values of the squark masses.