A Model Independent Understanding Of Wimp Dark Matter Searches

I explore the hypothesis that dark matter is composed of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, as motivated by various theories which solve the gauge hierarchy problem in the Standard Model of particle physics, and the interplay between various methods which can be sensitive to the presence of such a new particle. I present a model-independent parametrization of dark matter interactions and derive bounds on the various possible interactions from hadron collider studies sensitive to the presence of dark matter as well as from searches for new spectral lines in cosmic gamma rays, comparing the bounds from those two searches to those from direct detection experiments. I find that colliders provide the most strenuous constraints on spin-dependent scattering of dark matter, and that collider and indirect searches are highly complementary with direct detection searches, allowing derivations of the nature of dark matter interactions when a discovery does take place. I also present an exploration of how robust these collider bounds are to corrections from the presence of additional, related particles in the spectrum of new physics. As long as the additional, mediating particles are heavy enough to resonantly produce the final state that is searched for at colliders I find that the bounds from the effective theory are sound.