Explaining the W boson mass anomaly and dark matter with a U(1) dark sector* *WZF is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11905158, 11935009) and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City (20JCQNJC02030).

Abstract

The W boson mass recently reported by the CDF collaboration shows a deviation from the standard model prediction with an excess at the level. We investigate two simple extensions of the standard model with an extra dark sector. One is the extension, where the gauge field mixes with the standard model through gauge kinetic terms. The other is a general extension of the standard model. Fitting various experimental constraints, we find that the extension with only kinetic mixing can enhance the W boson mass by 10 MeV at most. Theextension can easily generate a 77 MeV enhancement of the W boson mass and also offer a viable dark matter candidate with a mass ranging from several hundred GeV to TeV, which may be detected by future dark matter direct detection experiments with improved sensitivities.