Supersymmetry, Dark Matter and the LHC

The conceptually simplest scenario for dark matter (DM) is that it is a stable thermal relic from standard Big Bang cosmology, in many SUSY models the lightest neutralino. The relic density determination selects special regions in SUSY model parameter space with concomitant implications for collider physics, dark matter searches and low energy measurements. By studying various one‐parameter extensions of the much‐studied mSUGRA model (where we relax the untested universality assumptions) constructed to be in accord with the measured relic density, we show that these implications are in general model‐dependent, so that LHC and DM measurements will provide clues to how sparticles acquire their masses. We point out some relatively robust implications for LHC and DM searches and conclude with an outlook for the future.