(In)Visible signatures of the minimal dark abelian gauge sector

TL;DR

This paper investigates how current and future meson decay experiments can detect or constrain a minimal dark abelian gauge sector involving a dark Higgs and dark photon, exploring their signatures and parameter space.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of experimental sensitivities to dark sector parameters, including novel insights into the complementarity of different detection methods and collider constraints.

Findings

Experiments can probe dark Higgs and dark photon parameters effectively.

Dark sector signatures can be visible or invisible depending on particle lifetimes.

Higgs decay measurements extend sensitivity to dark photon masses up to 10 GeV.

Abstract

In this paper we study the present and future sensitivities of the rare meson decay facilities KOTO, LHCb and Belle II to a light dark sector of the minimal dark abelian gauge symmetry where a dark Higgs $S$ and a dark photon $Z_D$ have masses $\lesssim 10$ GeV. We have explored the interesting scenario where $S$ can only decay to a pair of $Z_D$'s and so contribute to visible or invisible signatures, depending on the life-time of the latter. Our computations show that these accelerator experiments can access the dark Higgs (mass and scalar mixing) and the dark photon (mass and kinetic mixing) parameters in a complementary way. We have also discussed how the CMS measurement of the SM Higgs total decay width and their limit on the Higgs invisible branching ratio can be used to extend the experimental reach to dark photon masses up to $\sim 10$ GeV, providing at the same time sensitivity to the gauge coupling associated with the broken dark abelian symmetry.