Ciaran Williams

Constraining Dark Sectors at Colliders: Beyond the Effective Theory Approach

We outline and investigate a set of benchmark simplified models with the aim of providing a minimal simple framework for an interpretation of the existing and forthcoming searches of dark matter particles at the LHC. The simplified models we consider provide microscopic QFT descriptions of interactions between the Standard Model partons and the dark sector particles mediated by the four basic types of messenger fields: scalar, pseudoscalar, vector and axial-vector. Our benchmark models are characterized by four to five parameters, including the mediator mass and width, the dark matter mass and the effective coupling(s). In the gluon fusion production channel we resolve the top quark in the loop and compute full top-mass effects for scalar and pseudoscalar messengers. We show the LHC limits and reach at 8 and 14 TeV for models with all four messenger types. We also outline the complementarity of direct detection, indirect detection and LHC bounds for dark matter searches. Finally, we investigate the effects which arise from extending the simplified model to include potential new physics contributions in production. Using the scalar mediator as an example, we study the impact of heavy new physics loops which interfere with the top-mediated loops. Our computations are performed within the mcfm framework, and we provide fully flexible public Monte Carlo implementation.

Color-singlet production at NNLO in MCFM

We present the implementation of several color-singlet final-state processes at Next-to-Next-to Leading Order (NNLO) accuracy in QCD to the publicly available parton-level Monte Carlo program MCFM. Specifically we discuss the processes

Associated production of a Higgs boson at NNLO

pp\rightarrow H

Zγ production at NNLO including anomalous couplings

pp→H,

VBF and VH

pp\rightarrow Z

Precise predictions for V+jets dark matter backgrounds. V + jets dark matter backgrounds

pp→Z,