Signatures of dark Higgs boson in light fermionic dark matter scenarios

Abstract

Thermal dark matter scenarios based on light (sub-GeV) fermions typically require the presence of an extra dark sector containing both a massive dark photon along with a dark Higgs boson. The latter generates both the dark photon mass and an additional mass term for the dark sector fermions. This simple setup has both rich phenomenology and bright detection prospects at high-intensity accelerator experiments. We point out that in addition to the well studied pseudo-Dirac regime, this model can achieve the correct relic density in three different scenarios, and examine in details their properties and experimental prospects. We emphasize in particular the effect of the dark Higgs boson on both detection prospects and cosmological bounds.