Search for dark photon in association with charged leptons at electron-positron colliders

The dark photon can serve as a vector portal between the dark sector and the Standard Model via kinetic mixing. In this paper, we investigate the production of an invisible dark photon via the process $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\mathrm{\ell }}^{+}{\mathrm{\ell }}^{-}{A}^{\mathrm{\prime }}$ with $\mathrm{\ell }=e,\mu$, at the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC). The production cross sections for the signal process are calculated, and the kinematic distributions for the signal and background processes are analyzed. We further compute the branching ratio for the invisible decay of the dark photon, and explore the discovery potential of dark photons at the CEPC. It is found that dark photons with masses in the range $1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}<M_{A^{\mathrm{\prime }}}<16\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}$ are potentially detectable at the CEPC.