Fermion Portal Dark Matter

Abstract

We study a class of simplified dark matter models in which one dark matter particle couples with a mediator and a Standard Model fermion. In such models, collider and direct detection searches probe complimentary regions of parameter space. For Majorana dark matter, direct detection covers the region near mediator-dark matter degeneracy, while colliders probe regions with a large dark matter and mediator mass splitting. For Dirac and complex dark matter, direct detection is effective for the entire region above the mass threshold, but colliders provide a strong bound for dark matter lighter than a few GeV. We also point out that dedicated searches for signatures with two jets or a mono-jet not coming from initial state radiation, along missing transverse energy can cover the remaining parameter space for thermal relic dark matter.