Lower Limit on Dark Matter Production at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

We evaluate the prospects for finding evidence of dark matter production at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider WIMPs and superWIMPs, weakly- and superweakly-interacting massive particles, and characterize their properties through model-independent parameterizations. The observed relic density then implies lower bounds on dark matter production rates as functions of a few parameters. For WIMPs, the resulting signal is indistinguishable from background. For superWIMPs, however, this analysis implies significant production of metastable charged particles. For natural parameters, these rates may far exceed Drell-Yan cross sections and yield spectacular signals.