We assess the status of a wide class of WIMP dark matter (DM) models in light of the latest experimental results using the global fitting framework GAMBIT. We perform a global analysis of effective field theory (EFT) operators describing the interactions between a gauge-singlet Dirac fermion and the Standard Model quarks, the gluons and the photon. In this bottom-up approach, we simultaneously vary the coefficients of 14 such operators up to dimension 7, along with the DM mass, the scale of new physics and several nuisance parameters. Our likelihood functions include the latest data from Planck, direct and indirect detection experiments, and the LHC. For DM masses below 100 GeV, we find that it is impossible to satisfy all constraints simultaneously while maintaining EFT validity at LHC energies. For new physics scales around 1 TeV, our results are influenced by several small excesses in the LHC data and depend on the prescription that we adopt to ensure EFT validity. Furthermore, we find large regions of viable parameter space where the EFT is valid and the relic density can be reproduced, implying that WIMPs can still account for the DM of the universe while being consistent with the latest data.

Australia

China

Peter Athron

Canada

Neal Kozar

Csaba Balázs

Belgium

Ankit Beniwal

United Kingdom

Sanjay Bloor

Norway

Torsten Bringmann

United States

Joachim Brod

Christopher Chang

Jonathan Cornell

Ben Farmer

Andrew Fowlie

Germany

Tomás Gonzalo

Will Handley

Felix Kahlhoefer

Anders Kvellestad

CERN

France

Farvah Mahmoudi

Markus Prim

Are Raklev

Sweden

Janina Renk

Italy

Andre Scaffidi

Pat Scott

Patrick Stöcker

Aaron Vincent

Martin White

Sebastian Wild

Jure Zupan

Thermal WIMPs and the scale of new physics: global fits of Dirac dark matter effective field theories

Optimisation problems are ubiquitous in particle and astrophysics, and involve locating the optimum of a complicated function of many parameters that may be computationally expensive to evaluate. We describe a number of global optimisation algorithms that are not yet widely used in particle astrophysics, benchmark them against random sampling and existing techniques, and perform a detailed comparison of their performance on a range of test functions. These include four analytic test functions of varying dimensionality, and a realistic example derived from a recent global fit of weak-scale supersymmetry. Although the best algorithm to use depends on the function being investigated, we are able to present general conclusions about the relative merits of random sampling, Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimisation, the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy, Bayesian Optimisation, Grey Wolf Optimisation, and the PyGMO Artificial Bee Colony, Gaussian Particle Filter and Adaptive Memory Programming for Global Optimisation algorithms.

Melissa Beekveld

Netherlands

Sascha Caron

Barry Dillon

Spain

Eduardo Garrido-Merchán

Luc Hendriks

Iceland

Guðlaugur Jóhannesson

Adam Leinweber

Judita Mamužić

Gregory Martinez

Sydney Otten

Roberto Austri

Zachary Searle

Bob Stienen

Joaquin Vanschoren

A comparison of optimisation algorithms for high-dimensional particle and astrophysics applications

We extend and complete our analysis arXiv:1608.02380 and study the induced world volume metrics and Hawking temperatures of all type IIB rotating probe Dp-branes, dual to the temperature of different flavors at finite R-charge, in the Ben Ami–Kuperstein–Sonnenschein holographic models including the effects of spontaneous conformal and chiral flavor symmetry breakdown. The model embeds type IIB probe flavor Dp-branes into the Klebanov-Witten gravity dual of conformal gauge theory, with the embedding parameter, given by the minimal radial extension of the probes, dual to the IR scale of conformal and chiral flavor symmetry breakdown. We show that when the minimal extension is positive definite, the induced world volume metrics of type IIB rotating probe branes admit thermal horizons and Hawking temperatures despite the absence of black holes in the bulk subject to the world volume and topology of the nontrivial internal cycle wrapped by the probe. We also derive the energy–stress tensor of the thermal probes and study their backreaction and energy dissipation. We show that at the IR scale the backreaction is nonnegligible and find the energy can flow from the probes to the bulk, dual to the energy dissipation from the flavor sectors into the gauge theory.

Iran

Dariush Kaviani

Dp-brane Dynamics and Thermalization in Type IIB Ben Ami-Kuperstein-Sonnenschein Models

Searches for supersymmetric electroweakinos have entered a crucial phase, as the integrated luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider is now high enough to compensate for their weak production cross-sections. Working in a framework where the neutralinos and charginos are the only light sparticles in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, we use GAMBIT to perform a detailed likelihood analysis of the electroweakino sector. We focus on the impacts of recent ATLAS and CMS searches with  of 13 TeV proton-proton collision data. We also include constraints from LEP and invisible decays of the Z and Higgs bosons. Under the background-only hypothesis, we show that current LHC searches do not robustly exclude any range of neutralino or chargino masses. However, a pattern of excesses in several LHC analyses points towards a possible signal, with neutralino masses of  = (8–155, 103–260, 130–473, 219–502) GeV and chargino masses of  = (104–259, 224–507) GeV at the 95% confidence level. The lightest neutralino is mostly bino, with a possible modest Higgsino or wino component. We find that this excess has a combined local significance of $$3.3\sigma $$ <math><mrow><mn>3.3</mn><mi>σ</mi></mrow></math> , subject to a number of cautions. If one includes LHC searches for charginos and neutralinos conducted with 8 TeV proton-proton collision data, the local significance is lowered to 2.9$$\sigma $$ <math><mi>σ</mi></math> . We briefly consider the implications for dark matter, finding that the correct relic density can be obtained through the Higgs-funnel and Z-funnel mechanisms, even assuming that all other sparticles are decoupled. All samples, GAMBIT input files and best-fit models from this study are available on Zenodo.

Andy Buckley

Matthias Danninger

Julia Harz

Paul Jackson

Rose Kudzman-Blais

Andreas Petridis

Christopher Rogan

Abhishek Sharma

Yang Zhang

Combined collider constraints on neutralinos and charginos

We present global analyses of effective Higgs portal dark matter models in the frequentist and Bayesian statistical frameworks. Complementing earlier studies of the scalar Higgs portal, we use GAMBIT to determine the preferred mass and coupling ranges for models with vector, Majorana and Dirac fermion dark matter. We also assess the relative plausibility of all four models using Bayesian model comparison. Our analysis includes up-to-date likelihood functions for the dark matter relic density, invisible Higgs decays, and direct and indirect searches for weakly-interacting dark matter including the latest XENON1T data. We also account for important uncertainties arising from the local density and velocity distribution of dark matter, nuclear matrix elements relevant to direct detection, and Standard Model masses and couplings. In all Higgs portal models, we find parameter regions that can explain all of dark matter and give a good fit to all data. The case of vector dark matter requires the most tuning and is therefore slightly disfavoured from a Bayesian point of view. In the case of fermionic dark matter, we find a strong preference for including a CP-violating phase that allows suppression of constraints from direct detection experiments, with odds in favour of CP violation of the order of 100:1. Finally, we present DDCalc 2.0.0, a tool for calculating direct detection observables and likelihoods for arbitrary non-relativistic effective operators.

José Camargo-Molina

Tomás E. Gonzalo

Anthony Williams

Global analyses of Higgs portal singlet dark matter models using GAMBIT

In Ref. (GAMBIT Collaboration: Athron et. al., Eur. Phys. J. C. arXiv:1705.07908 , 2017 ) we introduced the global-fitting framework GAMBIT. In this addendum, we describe a new minor version increment of this package. GAMBIT1.1 includes full support for Mathematica backends, which we describe in some detail here. As an example, we backend SUSYHD Â (Vega and Villadoro, JHEP 07:159, 2015 ), which calculates the mass of the Higgs boson in the MSSM from effective field theory. We also describe updated likelihoods in PrecisionBit and DarkBit, and updated decay data included in DecayBit.

Csaba Balazs

Switzerland

Poland

Marcin Chrząszcz

Jan Conrad

Jonathan M. Cornell

Lars A. Dal

Hugh Dickinson

Joakim Edsjö

Abram Krislock

Johan Lundberg

James McKay

Gregory D. Martinez

Antje Putze

Joachim Ripken

Aldo Saavedra

Christopher Savage

South Korea

Seon-Hee Seo

Nicola Serra

Christoph Weniger

GAMBIT: the global and modular beyond-the-standard-model inference tool

We present the GAMBIT modules SpecBit, DecayBit and PrecisionBit. Together they provide a new framework for linking publicly available spectrum generators, decay codes and other precision observable calculations in a physically and statistically consistent manner. This allows users to automatically run various combinations of existing codes as if they are a single package. The modular design allows software packages fulfilling the same role to be exchanged freely at runtime, with the results presented in a common format that can easily be passed to downstream dark matter, collider and flavour codes. These modules constitute an essential part of the broader GAMBIT framework, a major new software package for performing global fits. In this paper we present the observable calculations, data, and likelihood functions implemented in the three modules, as well as the conventions and assumptions used in interfacing them with external codes. We also present 3-BIT-HIT, a command-line utility for computing mass spectra, couplings, decays and precision observables in the MSSM, which shows how the three modules can easily be used independently of GAMBIT.

Chris Rogan

SpecBit, DecayBit and PrecisionBit: GAMBIT modules for computing mass spectra, particle decay rates and precision observables

We study the seven-dimensional Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM7) with the new GAMBIT software framework, with all parameters defined at the weak scale. Our analysis significantly extends previous weak-scale, phenomenological MSSM fits, by adding more and newer experimental analyses, improving the accuracy and detail of theoretical predictions, including dominant uncertainties from the Standard Model, the Galactic dark matter halo and the quark content of the nucleon, and employing novel and highly-efficient statistical sampling methods to scan the parameter space. We find regions of the MSSM7 that exhibit co-annihilation of neutralinos with charginos, stops and sbottoms, as well as models that undergo resonant annihilation via both light and heavy Higgs funnels. We find high-likelihood models with light charginos, stops and sbottoms that have the potential to be within the future reach of the LHC. Large parts of our preferred parameter regions will also be accessible to the next generation of direct and indirect dark matter searches, making prospects for discovery in the near future rather good.

A global fit of the MSSM with GAMBIT

We introduce DarkBit, an advanced software code for computing dark matter constraints on various extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics, comprising both new native code and interfaces to external packages. This release includes a dedicated signal yield calculator for gamma-ray observations, which significantly extends current tools by implementing a cascade-decay Monte Carlo, as well as a dedicated likelihood calculator for current and future experiments (gamLike). This provides a general solution for studying complex particle physics models that predict dark matter annihilation to a multitude of final states. We also supply a direct detection package that models a large range of direct detection experiments (DDCalc), and that provides the corresponding likelihoods for arbitrary combinations of spin-independent and spin-dependent scattering processes. Finally, we provide custom relic density routines along with interfaces to DarkSUSY, micrOMEGAs, and the neutrino telescope likelihood package nulike. DarkBit is written in the framework of the Global And Modular Beyond the Standard Model Inference Tool (GAMBIT), providing seamless integration into a comprehensive statistical fitting framework that allows users to explore new models with both particle and astrophysics constraints, and a consistent treatment of systematic uncertainties. In this paper we describe its main functionality, provide a guide to getting started quickly, and show illustrative examples for results obtained with DarkBit (both as a stand-alone tool and as a GAMBIT module). This includes a quantitative comparison between two of the main dark matter codes (DarkSUSY and micrOMEGAs), and application of DarkBit ’s advanced direct and indirect detection routines to a simple effective dark matter model.

DarkBit: a GAMBIT module for computing dark matter observables and likelihoods

We present the most comprehensive global fits to date of three supersymmetric models motivated by grand unification: the constrained minimal supersymmetric standard model (CMSSM), and its Non-Universal Higgs Mass generalisations NUHM1 and NUHM2. We include likelihoods from a number of direct and indirect dark matter searches, a large collection of electroweak precision and flavour observables, direct searches for supersymmetry at LEP and Runs I and II of the LHC, and constraints from Higgs observables. Our analysis improves on existing results not only in terms of the number of included observables, but also in the level of detail with which we treat them, our sampling techniques for scanning the parameter space, and our treatment of nuisance parameters. We show that stau co-annihilation is now ruled out in the CMSSM at more than 95% confidence. Stop co-annihilation turns out to be one of the most promising mechanisms for achieving an appropriate relic density of dark matter in all three models, whilst avoiding all other constraints. We find high-likelihood regions of parameter space featuring light stops and charginos, making them potentially detectable in the near future at the LHC. We also show that tonne-scale direct detection will play a largely complementary role, probing large parts of the remaining viable parameter space, including essentially all models with multi-TeV neutralinos.

Roberto Ruiz de Austri

Global fits of GUT-scale SUSY models with GAMBIT