Hadronic Mono-Z Dark Matter Sensitivity with Flow Matching on CMS Open Data
Abstract
We present a projected sensitivity study for hadronic mono-Z dark-matter production using CMS Run~2015D HTMHT open data corresponding to 2.256382381~\invfb, from which 1{,}439{,}523 events satisfy the hadronic mono-Z selection. Backgrounds are modelled with a conditional flow-matching continuous normalizing flow trained on the selected HTMHT events and evaluated on a held-out validation split reweighted to the full selected population. To mitigate artifacts from missing-object features and avoid in-sample scoring bias we apply sentinel imputation for undefined angular features, persist the train/validation split indices, and enforce a minimum reported background yield of 20 events when selecting the working point. A signal-side offline trigger proxy is applied to the simulated signal before scoring. Under this procedure the baseline analysis yields expected significances of 2.89σ, 7.62σ, and 7.41σ for three simplified-model benchmarks. An ablation study that removes the detailed extra-jet kinematics reduces the expected significance by 53--71\%, indicating that extra-jet topology carries substantial discriminating power in the hadronic mono-Z channel. These results are projected sensitivities (no unblinding performed); the limitations and reproducibility of the study are discussed in Sections limitations and reproducibility.
Related
- Mono-Z signal for dark matter searches at future lepton colliders and cosmological interpretation
- High-sensitivity Ultralight Dark Matter detector: Parametrically Amplified Casimir Devices
- Anomalous Dimensions, Matching, and Phenomenology of Dirac Fermionic Dark Matter Effective Interactions
- Light top-flavoured dark matter in dark SMEFT: one-loop matching and phenomenology
- Projected Sensitivity to Slow Muonphilic Dark Matter with Accelerator Muon Beams
BibTeX
@misc{rasineni2026hadronic,
title = {{Hadronic Mono-Z Dark Matter Sensitivity with Flow Matching on CMS Open Data}},
author = {Hitesh Rasineni and Bhavishya Chebrolu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.02923},
eprint = {2609.02923},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02923},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Hadronic Mono-Z Dark Matter Sensitivity with Flow Matching on CMS Open Data
AU - Hitesh Rasineni
AU - Bhavishya Chebrolu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.02923
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02923
AB - We present a projected sensitivity study for hadronic mono-Z dark-matter production using CMS Run~2015D HTMHT open data corresponding to 2.256382381~\invfb, from which 1{,}439{,}523 events satisfy the hadronic mono-Z selection. Backgrounds are modelled with a conditional flow-matching continuous normalizing flow trained on the selected HTMHT events and evaluated on a held-out validation split reweighted to the full selected population. To mitigate artifacts from missing-object features and avoid in-sample scoring bias we apply sentinel imputation for undefined angular features, persist the train/validation split indices, and enforce a minimum reported background yield of 20 events when selecting the working point. A signal-side offline trigger proxy is applied to the simulated signal before scoring. Under this procedure the baseline analysis yields expected significances of 2.89σ, 7.62σ, and 7.41σ for three simplified-model benchmarks. An ablation study that removes the detailed extra-jet kinematics reduces the expected significance by 53--71\%, indicating that extra-jet topology carries substantial discriminating power in the hadronic mono-Z channel. These results are projected sensitivities (no unblinding performed); the limitations and reproducibility of the study are discussed in Sections limitations and reproducibility.
ER -