Dark matter at the LHC: EFTs and gauge invariance

Understand

Effective field theory (EFT) formulations of dark matter interactions have proven to be a convenient and popular way to quantify LHC bounds on dark matter.

• However, some of the non-renormalizable EFT operators considered do not respect the gauge symmetries of the Standard Model.
• We carefully discuss under what circumstances such operators can arise, and outline potential issues in their interpretation and application.