Dark matter searches at BESIII

TL;DR

This paper reviews the BESIII experiment's recent searches for dark matter candidates like axion-like particles, dark photons, and light Higgs bosons, utilizing high-energy electron-positron collision data to explore potential new particles in the MeV to GeV range.

Contribution

It provides the latest experimental results from BESIII on dark matter particles, demonstrating the experiment's capability to probe new physics in the MeV to GeV mass range.

Findings

No significant signals observed for dark matter candidates.

Constraints set on the coupling strengths of axion-like particles and dark photons.

Enhanced understanding of dark matter interactions at collider energies.

Abstract

Dark matter (DM) is a new type of invisible matter introduced to explain various features of recent astrophysical observations, including galaxy rotation curves and other fundamental characteristics of our universe. DM may couple to ordinary matter via portals, which open up possibilities for new particles, such as axion-like particle, light Higgs boson, dark photon, and spin-1/2 fermions. If the masses of these particles lie in the MeV to GeV range, they can be explored by high-intensity electron-positron collider experiments, such as the BESIII experiment. BESIII has accumulated a huge amount of datasets at several energy points, including the $J/\psi$, $\psi(3686)$, and $\psi(3770)$ resonances. BESIII has recently explored the possibility for axion-like particle and light Higgs boson through radiative $J/\psi$ decays, dark photon via the initial-state radiation process, and a massless dark photon in $\Lambda_c$ decays. This report highlights the latest results from the BESIII experiment on these topics.