Dark Matter searches: the nightmare scenario

2011/07/31 by Gianfranco Bertone, Daniel T. Cumberbatch, Daniel Cumberbatch +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Large Hadron Collider #Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model #Neutrino #Parameter space #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Physics beyond the Standard Model #Standard Model (mathematical formulation) #Statistics #Supersymmetry #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2012/01/004

published as JCAP 01 (2012) 004 · V2: 24 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables. Replaced to match version published in JCAP. Minor revisions made to address referee's comments

openalex publication_date 2012/01/03 · arxiv created 2012/01/04 · arxiv updated 2012/01/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The unfortunate case where the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) fails to discover physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) is sometimes referred to as the ``Nightmare scenario'' of particle physics. We study the consequences of this hypothetical scenario for Dark Matter (DM), in the framework of the constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (cMSSM). We evaluate the surviving regions of the cMSSM parameter space after null searches at the LHC, using several different LHC configurations, and study the consequences for DM searches with ton-scale direct detectors and the IceCube neutrino telescope. We demonstrate that ton-scale direct detection experiments will be able to conclusively probe the cMSSM parameter space that would survive null searches at the LHC with 100 fb −1 of integrated luminosity at 14 TeV. We also demonstrate that IceCube (80 strings plus DeepCore) will be able to probe as much as ≃ 17% of the currently favoured parameter space after 5 years of observation.

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