https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-12361-6
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Electroweak loop contributions to the direct detection of wino dark matter
1
Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology Group, Department of Physics, King’s College London, WC2R 2LS, London, UK
2
Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
3
Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan
4
William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 55455, Minneapolis, MN, USA
5
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute and School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200240, Shanghai, China
Received:
4
June
2023
Accepted:
15
December
2023
Published online:
4
January
2024
Electroweak loop corrections to the matrix elements for the spin-independent scattering of cold dark matter particles on nuclei are generally small, typically below the uncertainty in the local density of cold dark matter. However, as shown in this paper, there are instances in which the electroweak loop corrections are relatively large, and change significantly the spin-independent dark matter scattering rate. An important example occurs when the dark matter particle is a wino, e.g., in anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking (AMSB) and pure gravity mediation (PGM) models. We find that the one-loop electroweak corrections to the spin-independent wino LSP scattering cross section generally interfere constructively with the tree-level contribution for AMSB models with negative Higgsino mixing, 
, and in PGM-like models for both signs of 
, lifting the cross section out of the neutrino fog and into a range that is potentially detectable in the next generation of direct searches for cold dark matter scattering.
© The Author(s) 2024
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