Nicole F. Bell, James B. Dent, Ahmad J. Galea, Thomas D. Jacques, Lawrence M. Krauss, Thomas J. Weiler
We investigate a mono-Z process as a potential dark matter search strategy at the LHC. In this channel a single Z boson recoils against missing transverse momentum, attributed to dark matter particles, $\chi$, which escape the detector. This search strategy is related, and complementary to, monojet and monophoton searches. For illustrative purposes we consider the process $q\bar{q} -> \chi\chi Z$, where the Z boson is emitted from either the initial state quarks, or from the internal propagator. Among the signatures of this process will be a pair of muons with high pT that reconstruct to the invariant mass the Z, and large amounts of missing transverse energy. Being a purely elecroweak signal, QCD and other Standard Model backgrounds are relatively easily removed with modest selection cuts. We compare the signal to Standard Model backgrounds and demonstrate that, for large regions of parameter space, the signal would be clearly visible above background in future LHC data, allowing either new discovery potential or the possibility of supplementing information about the dark sector beyond that available from other observable channels.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0231
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