Abstract
The Standard Model of particles physics is a well-tested theory at the electroweak scale. However this is not the end of the story. For instance, it does not solve the dark matter problem, which is one of the major issues of the modern physics. About 85% of the matter in the Universe is not describe by the Standard Model. It is called dark matter. This thesis presents a category of models responding to the dark matter problem. These models are based on the WIMP-paradigm, stating that a neutral particle with an electroweak cross-section and with an electroweak-scale mass roughly explains the observed relic abundance. Nevertheless, a closer look reveals that this correspondence is quantitatively not very precise since multi-TeV dark matter masses are required for the simplest models, which is 1-2 orders of magnitude larger than the electroweak scale. However, with an extended dark sector, it is possible to maintain the dark matter particle mass close to the electroweak scale and to keep the observed relic density. My thesis discloses simple effective models of fermionic WIMP dark matter, where the dark matter candidate is a mixture of a Standard Model singlet and an n-plet of SU(2)×U(1). The dark matter is assumed to be aroundthe electroweak scale, and the mixing is generated by higher-dimensional operators involving the Higgs doublet. Upon electroweak symmetry breaking, the Higgs takes its vacuum expectation value and non diagonal mass matrices are generated for the dark matter sector. This causes mixing between dark matter sector states, and physical states and masses are obtained by diagonalising the mass matrices. For suitable parameters, it is always possible to adjust the mixing to reproduce the observed relic density. This is reffered to as a well-tempered mixing. In order to stabilise the dark matter particle, we need to add a discrete symmetry under which the dark matter sector is odd and the Standard Model is even. For n odd, the n-plet is a Majorana multiplet with zero hypercharge. For n even, we consider a bi-multiplet with opposite hypercharges of ± 1/2 such as to form a Dirac spinor. We focus on the observed relic density and the direct detection constraints for the singlet-triplet, singlet-quadruplet and singlet-quintuplet configurations. Note that bounds from indirect detection are less stringent than those from direct detection. We impose electroweak mass for the dark matter particle such that it could be produced by the LHC. Results show that it is always possible to find a choice of parameters reproducing the observed relic density with an electroweak dark matter mass which conforms to the direct and a fortiori indirect detection constraints. In the region of validity of the effective theory, direct detection is less constraining for higher representations of the n-plet due to the tiny mixing.