Unveiling the Vanishing Higgsino-Nucleon Scattering in the MSSM at Next-to-Leading Order

Abstract

Higgsino dark matter (DM) is considered one of the most well-motivated and minimal DM scenarios arising from supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. Motivated by the requirement of electroweak naturalness, Higgsinos are expected to be relatively light, with masses close to the weak scale. While a pure Higgsino state typically evades current direct detection limits, next-to-leading (NLO) order radiative corrections may bring it within the sensitivity of upcoming experiments. On the contrary, a more important consequence, observed specifically near the kinematic threshold for the production of two particles, is that the NLO corrections lower the DM-nucleon cross section below the neutrino floor. We explicitly examine the cancellation mechanism responsible for suppressed Higgsino-nucleon scattering and identify regions of MSSM parameter space where spin-independent cross-sections may vanish.