Discovering Inelastic Thermal-Relic Dark Matter at Colliders

Abstract: Dark Matter particles with inelastic interactions are ubiquitous in extensions of the Standard Model, yet remain challenging to fully probe with existing strategies. We propose a series of powerful searches at hadron and lepton colliders that are sensitive to inelastic dark matter dynamics. In representative models featuring either a massive dark photon or a magnetic dipole interaction, we find that the LHC and BaBar could offer strong sensitivity to the thermal-relic dark matter parameter space for dark matter masses between ~100 MeV-100 GeV and fractional mass-splittings above the percent level; future searches at Belle II with a dedicated monophoton trigger could also offer sensitivity to thermal-relic scenarios with masses below a few GeV. Thermal scenarios with either larger masses or splittings are largely ruled out; lower masses remain viable yet may be accessible with other search strategies.