Searching for Low Mass Dark Portal at the LHC

Abstract

Light dark matter with mass smaller than about 10 GeV is difficult to probe from direct detection experiments. In order to have the correct thermal relic abundance, the mediator of the interaction between dark matter and the Standard Model (SM) should also be relatively light, $\sim 10^2$ GeV. If such a light mediator couples to charged leptons, it would already be strongly constrained by direct searches at colliders. In this work, we consider the scenario of a leptophobic light $Z'$ vector boson as the mediator, and study the the prospect of searching for it at the 8 TeV Large Hadron Collider (LHC). To improve the reach in the low mass region, we perform a detailed study of the processes that the $Z'$ is produced in association with jet, photon, $W^\pm$ and $Z^0$. We show that in the region where the mass of $Z'$ is between 80 and 400 GeV, the constraint from associated production can be comparable or even stronger than the known monojet and dijet constraints. Searches in these channels can be complementary to the monojet search, in particular if the $Z'$ couplings to quarks ($g_{Z'}$) and dark matter ($g_D$) are different. For $g_D < g_{Z'}$, we show that there is a larger region of parameter space which has correct thermal relic abundance and a light $Z'$, $M_{Z'} \sim 100 $ GeV. This region, which cannot be covered by the mono-jet search, can be covered by the resonance searches described in this paper.