Effective field theory for dark matter direct detection up to dimension seven

Abstract

We present the full basis of effective operators relevant for dark matter direct detection, up to and including operators of mass dimension seven. We treat the cases where dark matter is either a Dirac fermion, a Majorana fermion, a complex scalar, or a real scalar, allowing for dark matter to furnish a general representation of the electroweak gauge group. We describe the algorithmic procedure used to obtain the minimal set of effective operators and provide the tree-level matching conditions onto the effective theory valid below the electroweak scale.