Searching for Inert Doublet Model scalars at high energy CLIC

The Inert Doublet Model (IDM) is a simple extension of the Standard Model, introducing an additional Higgs doublet that brings in four new scalar particles. The lightest of the IDM scalars is stable and is a good candidate for a dark matter particle. The potential of discovering the IDM scalars in the experiment at Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), e+e− collider proposed as the next generation infrastructure at CERN, has been tested for two high-energy running stages, at 1.5 TeV and 3 TeV. Considered is the CLIC sensitivity to IDM charged scalar pair-production for 23 high-mass benchmark points in the model parameter space and the semi-leptonic final state. The simplified simulation of detector response with Delphes package was used, and the results were validated for the selected 5 benchmark scenarios using full detector simulation based on Geant4. For both simulation methods the cut-based event preselection was applied, followed by a multivariate analysis based on the Boosted Decision Trees. Results of the study indicate that heavy charged IDM scalars can be discovered at CLIC for most of the proposed benchmark scenarios, with statistical significance, depending on the model parameters, up to about 60σ.