"Shedding light on Dark Matter"

Abstract:

 

There is strong evidence from cosmological observations that the dominant form of matter in the universe is dark matter. However, little is known about its nature. Recent reports of a possible dark matter signal from several direct detection experiments have further highlighted the need for independent verification from non-astrophysical experiments, such as colliders. I will present the results of a search for dark matter performed using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in proton proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The search is performed using a monojet plus missing transverse energy signature. The results are interpreted within the framework of an effective field theory and used to place bounds on the dark matter-nucleon scattering cross-section which can be directly compared with those from the direct detection experiments.