Electroweak Renormalization of Neutralino-Higgs Interactions at One-Loop and Its Impacts on Spin-Independent Direct Detection of Wino-like Dark Matter

A Wino-like neutralino dark matter (DM) in the form of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) has been considered one of the popular paradigms that can naturally accommodate new physics at a relatively higher scale, typically beyond the reach of the LHC. The constraint on the DM relic density typically implies a lightest neutralino mass ≃ 2 TeV. Its observational signature through nuclear recoil experiments, specifically involving DM-nucleon spin-independent (SI) scattering, is not impressive, following its high masses and tiny Higgsino fractions. The theoretical calculations can be improved when we compute all the one-loop electroweak (EW) corrections to the three-point vertices for the neutralino (Wino)-Higgs interactions, which in turn boosts the DM-nucleon scattering cross-sections through the SM-like Higgs exchange. Importantly, we include the counterterm contributions. In addition, we incorporate the other next-to-leading order (NLO) EW DM-quark and DM-gluon interactions present in the literature to calculate the DM-nucleon cross-sections. With the improved and precise theoretical estimates, DM-nucleon scattering cross-sections may increase or decrease significantly by more than 100% compared to leading order (LO) cross-sections in different parts of the parameter space.