Search for Light Dark Matter in Rare Meson Decays

Current dark matter direct detection experiments have low sensitivity to sub-GeV dark matter. In this work, we demonstrate that rare $B$ and $K$ meson decays with missing energy in the final state can serve as efficient probes in this mass range. We analyze a generic $Z^{\mathrm{\prime }}$ portal dark matter model and derive upper limits on its parameters from experimental bounds on the rare $B$ and $K$ meson decays. Our results show that such meson decay processes provide complementary constraints to current direct detection experiments for sub-GeV dark matter, particularly for interaction forms mediated by dark matter momentum-dependent operators.