Speaker
Description
Dark matter constitutes about 85% of the matter content of the Universe, yet its microscopic nature remains unknown. While astrophysical and cosmological observations provide compelling evidence for its existence, they do not reveal how it interacts with Standard Model particles beyond gravity. Collider experiments such as the LHC provide a complementary avenue of investigation by directly searching for dark matter production at the highest available energies. This approach enables the exploration of a wide variety of final states, ranging from traditional WIMP searches to more complex and intriguing scenarios involving dark sectors and new mediator particles. Such searches are crucial for mapping out the possible connections between cosmological evidence and particle physics signatures.
The sensitivity achieved by ATLAS underscores the continued impact of collider-based searches in probing the particle nature of dark matter and in constraining theoretical models. In this contribution, we will present an overview of dark matter searches performed with ATLAS during Run 2, based on the full dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹, as well as highlight recent results from the ongoing Run 3 data-taking campaign. Together, these results provide an essential complement to direct and indirect detection experiments.
