Search for Invisible Decays of the Higgs Boson and Dark Matter Interpretations

The study of the 125 GeV Higgs boson can be a powerful tool in the search for Dark Matter (DM) particles at the Large Hadron Collier (LHC). DM particles may be produced in decays of the observed Higgs boson H to DM particles that would appear invisible to the detector. A new combined analysis of searches for Higgs to invisible decays performed by the ATLAS Collaboration at the CERN LHC at various center-of-mass energies is presented. Results are interpreted in the context of models where the 125 GeV Higgs boson H acts as a portal to DM, and limits are set on the scattering cross section of weakly interacting massive particles and nucleons.