Prospects and Blind Spots for Neutralino Dark Matter

Understand

Using a simplified model framework, we assess observational limits and discovery prospects for neutralino dark matter, taken here to be a general admixture of bino, wino, and Higgsino.

• Experimental constraints can be weakened or even nullified in regions of parameter space near 1) purity limits, where the dark matter is mostly bino, wino, or Higgsino, or 2) blind spots, where the relevant couplings of dark matter to the $Z$ or Higgs bosons vanish identically.
• We analytically identify all blind spots relevant to spin-independent and spin-dependent scattering and show that they arise for diverse choices of relative signs among $M_1$, $M_2$, and $\mu$.
• At present, XENON100 and IceCube still permit large swaths of viable parameter space, including the well-tempered neutralino.