Dark matter through the quark vector current portal

Abstract

We consider models of light dark matter coupled to quarks through a vector current interaction. For low energies, these models must be treated through the effective couplings to mesons, which are implemented here through the chiral Lagrangian. We find the signals of dark matter annihilation and decay to the light mesons, and find the expected photon spectrum from the decay of the hadrons. We compare the current and future observations, and show that there is a significant discovery reach for these models.