On the Validity of the Effective Field Theory for Dark Matter Searches at the LHC

Giorgio Busoni, Andrea De Simone, Enrico Morgante, Antonio Riotto

Published 2013-07-08, updated 2013-12-19Version 2

We discuss the limitations to the use of the effective field theory approach to study dark matter at the LHC. We introduce and study a few quantities, some of them independent of the ultraviolet completion of the dark matter theory, which quantify the error made when using effective operators to describe processes with very high momentum transfer. Our criteria indicate up to what cutoff energy scale, and with what precision, the effective description is valid, depending on the dark matter mass and couplings.