Speaker: 
Zhen Liu
Speaker affiliation: 
University of Pittsburgh
Date: 
Monday, August 4, 2014 - 17:00
Room: 
Lecture Theatre B - Physics Building (46)
Title: 
Neutralino Dark Matter in the (N)MSSM: Direct/Indirect Detection and Collider Searches
Abstract: 

We study the neutralino being the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP) as a cold Dark Matter (DM) candidate in the framework of the MSSM and the NMSSM. We present a comprehensive study on the properties of viable solutions and point out their immediate relevance to the experiments of the underground direct detection such as superCDMS and LUX/LZ, and the astro-physical indirect search such as Fermi-LAT. For light DM (<40 GeV), we also fi nd that the decays of the SM-like Higgs boson may be modi ed appreciably and the new decay channels to the light SUSY particles may be sizable. The new light CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons will decay to a pair of LSPs as well as other observable final states, leading to interesting new Higgs phenomenology at colliders. For the light sfermion searches, the signals would be very challenging to observe at the LHC given the current bounds. However, a high energy and high luminosity lepton collider, such as the ILC, would be able to fully cover these scenarios by searching for events with large missing energy plus charged tracks or displaced vertices.