Searching for super-WIMPs in leptonic heavy meson decays

TL;DR

This paper investigates constraints on super-WIMP dark matter models with masses around 1-100 keV by analyzing leptonic decays of heavy mesons, focusing on pseudoscalar and vector particles coupling to the Standard Model.

Contribution

It provides new bounds on super-WIMP dark matter from heavy meson decay processes, considering both pseudoscalar and vector cases with kinetic mixing.

Findings

Constraints on super-WIMP couplings to quarks derived from meson decay data

Sensitivity of decays to dark matter-quark couplings independent of dark matter mass for small masses

Analysis applicable to axion-like and kinetically mixed vector particles

Abstract

We study constraints on the models of bosonic super-weakly interacting particle (super-WIMP) dark matter (DM) with DM masses $m_X \sim \mathcal{O}(1 - 100)$ keV from leptonic decays $M\rightarrow \ell \bar{\nu}_\ell + X$, where $M=B^\pm, D^\pm, D_s^\pm$ is a heavy meson state. We focus on two cases where $X$ denotes either a light pseudoscalar (axion-like), or a light vector state that couples to the standard model (SM) through kinetic mixing. We note that for a small DM mass these decays are separately sensitive to DM couplings to quarks, but not its mass.