Abstract

The search for dark matter remains one of the central open questions in high-energy physics and a key objective of the LHC program. Supersymmetry continues to serve as a benchmark theoretical framework, offering well-motivated dark matter candidates alongside a spectrum of new particles. In this talk, I will review a series of excesses reported in ATLAS and CMS analyses targeting electroweak supersymmetry in the Run 2 dataset. While the individual deviations each have a significance of around two standard deviations, taken together they form an intriguing pattern that merits further investigation.

I will use work I have carried out as a case study, where we probed slepton models in the compressed regime where the mass difference between the slepton and the lightest neutralino is small. These models, compatible with dark matter density constraints, remain largely unexplored since the LEP era and provide a compelling target for investigation. I will then place the results of this analysis within a broader context by discussing complementary excesses across ATLAS and CMS . Finally, I will argue that, as Run 3 draws to a close, this collection of anomalies represents some of the most promising opportunities to test for new physics with this new dataset.