Prospects for axion detection in natural SUSY with mixed axion-higgsino dark matter: back to invisible?

Abstract

Under the expectation that nature is natural, we extend the Standard Model to include SUSY to stabilize the electroweak sector and PQ symmetry to stabilize the QCD sector. Then natural SUSY arises from a Kim-Nilles solution to the SUSY mu problem which allows for a little hierarchy where mu similar to f(a)(2) /M-P similar to 100-300 GeV while the SUSY particle mass scale m(SUSY) similar to 1 - 10TeV >> mu. Dark matter then consists of two particles: a higgsino-like WIMP and a SUSY DFSZ axion. The range of allowed axion mass values m(a) depends on the mixed axion-higgsino relic density. The range of m(a) is actually restricted in this case by limits on WIMPs from direct and indirect detection experiments. We plot the expected axion detection rate at microwave cavity experiments. The axion-photon-photon coupling is severely diminished by charged higgsino contributions to the anomalous coupling. In this case, the axion may retreat, at least temporarily, back into the regime of near invisibility. From our results, we urge new ideas for techniques which probe both deeper and more broadly into axion coupling versus axion mass parameter space, (c) 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl