Leptophilic Effective WIMPs

Abstract

Effective WIMP models are minimal extensions of the standard model that explain the relic density of dark matter by the ``WIMP miracle.'' In this paper we consider the phenomenology of effective WIMPs with trilinear couplings to leptons and a new ``lepton partner'' particle. The observed relic abundance fixes the strength of the cubic coupling, so the parameters of the models are defined by the masses of the WIMP and lepton partner particles. This gives a simple parameter space where collider and direct detection experiments can be compared under well-defined physical minimality assumptions. The most sensitive collider probe is the search for leptons + MET, while the most sensitive direct detection channel is scattering from nuclei arising from loop diagrams. Collider and direct detection searches are highly complementary: colliders give the only meaningful constraint when dark matter is its own antiparticle, while direct detection is generally more sensitive if the dark matter is not its own antiparticle.