Systematic approach to $B$-physics anomalies and $t$-channel dark matter

TL;DR

This paper systematically classifies minimal renormalisable models linking $B$-physics anomalies with $t$-channel dark matter, exploring their phenomenology and experimental constraints.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic classification of minimal models connecting $B$-anomalies and dark matter via $t$-channel mediators, with detailed phenomenological analysis.

Findings

Identified representative models compatible with current experimental constraints.

Established correlations between flavor observables and dark matter relic abundance.

Constrained models using latest collider and dark matter detection data.

Abstract

We study renormalisable models with minimal field content that can provide a viable Dark Matter candidate through the standard freeze-out paradigm and, simultaneously, accommodate the observed anomalies in semileptonic $B$-meson decays at one loop. Following the hypothesis of minimality, this outcome can be achieved by extending the particle spectrum of the Standard Model either with one vector-like fermion and two scalars or two vector-like fermions and one scalar. The Dark Matter annihilations are mediated by $t$-channel exchange of other new particles contributing to the $B$-anomalies, thus resulting in a correlation between flavour observables and Dark Matter abundance. Again based on minimality, we assume the new states to couple only with left-handed muons and second and third generation quarks. Besides an ad hoc symmetry needed to stabilise the Dark Matter, the interactions of the new states are dictated only by gauge invariance. We present here for the first time a systematic classification of the possible models of this kind, according to the quantum numbers of the new fields under the Standard Model gauge group. Within this general setup we identify a group of representative models that we systematically study, applying the most updated constraints from flavour observables, dedicated Dark Matter experiments, and LHC searches of leptons and/or jets and missing energy, and of disappearing charged tracks.