Searching for light Dark Matter in heavy meson decays

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of heavy meson decays at flavor factories to detect light Dark Matter particles through missing energy signatures, proposing methods for current and future experiments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of light Dark Matter production in heavy meson decays with missing energy, highlighting experimental strategies for detection.

Findings

Heavy meson decays can be used to search for light Dark Matter.

Tagging missing-energy decays enhances detection prospects.

Current and future flavor factories are suitable for these studies.

Abstract

Beauty and charm e+e- factories running at resonance thresholds have unique capabilities for studies of the production of light Dark Matter particles in the decays of B_q (D) meson pairs. We provide a comprehensive study of light Dark Matter production in heavy meson decays with missing energy in the final state, such as B_q (D^0) -> "missing energy" and B_q (D^0) -> \gamma + "missing energy". We argue that such transitions can be studied at the current flavor factories (and future super-flavor factories) by tagging the missing-energy decays with B_q (D^0) decays "on the other side".