Moving Beyond Effective Field Theory in Dark Matter Searches at Colliders

Abstract

In the past few years, the interest to collider searches for direct dark matter (DM) production has been growing exponentially. A variety of "Mono-X" signatures have been considered, where X stands for a probe particle recoiling against DM particles, which allows for the event to be triggerable. So far, the analysis of these signatures has been largely carried out in the framework of effective field theory (EFT), which allows for a comparison of the collider searches with searches in direct detection experiments. Unfortunately, as it has been recently pointed out by a number of authors, the EFT approach has severe limitations and may result in drastically underestimated or overestimated reach. I'll discuss these limitations and the new ideas in interpreting the collider searches for DM.