Higher Dimensional Effective Operators for Direct Dark Matter Detection

Abstract: We discuss higher dimensional effective operators describing interactions between fermionic dark matter and Standard Model particles. They are typically suppressed compared to the leading order effective operators, which can explain why no conclusive direct dark matter detection has been made so far. The ultraviolet completions of the effective operators, which we systematically study, require new particles. These particles can potentially have masses at the TeV scale and can therefore be phenomenologically interesting for LHC physics. We demonstrate that the lowest order options require Higgs-portal interactions generated by dimension six operators. We list all possible tree-level completions with extra fermions and scalars, and we discuss the LHC phenomenology of a specific example with extra heavy fermion doublets.