Maverick dark matter at colliders

Assuming that dark matter is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) species X produced in the early Universe as a cold thermal relic, we study the collider signal of pp or p (p) over bar -> (X) over bar X + jets and its distinguishability from standard-model background processes associated with jets and missing energy. We assume that the WIMP is the sole particle related to dark matter within reach of the LHC - a maverick particle - and that it couples to quarks through a higher dimensional contact interaction. We simulate the WIMP final-state signal X (X) over bar + jets and dominant standard-model (SM) background processes and find that the dark-matter production process results in higher energies for the colored final state partons than do the standard-model background processes. As a consequence, the detectable signature of maverick dark matter is an excess over standard-model expectations of events consisting of large missing transverse energy, together with large leading jet transverse momentum and scalar sum of the transverse momenta of the jets. Existing Tevatron data and forthcoming LHC data can constrain (or discover!) maverick dark matter.