1302.1657 (Michael Klasen et al.)

Electroweak corrections to the direct detection cross section of inert
higgs dark matter    [PDF]

Michael Klasen, Carlos E. Yaguna, Jose D. Ruiz-Alvarez

The inert higgs model is a minimal extension of the Standard Model that features a viable dark matter candidate, the so-called inert higgs ($H^0$). In this paper, we compute and analyze the dominant electroweak corrections to the direct detection cross section of dark matter within this model. These corrections arise from one-loop diagrams mediated by gauge bosons that, contrary to the tree-level result, do not depend on the unknown scalar coupling $\lambda$. We study in detail these contributions and show that they can modify in a significant way the prediction of the spin-independent direct detection cross section. In both viable regimes of the model, $\mhView original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.1657