Search

Rare meson decays are among the most sensitive probes of both heavy and light new physics. Among them, new physics searches using kaons benefit from their small total decay widths and the availability of very large datasets. On the other hand, useful complementary information is provided by hyperon decay measurements. We summarize the relevant phenomenological models and the status of the searches in a comprehensive list of kaon and hyperon decay channels. We identify new search strategies for under-explored signatures, and demonstrate that the improved sensitivities from current and next-generation experiments could lead to a qualitative leap in the exploration of light dark sectors.

If dark matter couples predominantly to the axial-vector currents with heavyquarks, the leading contribution to dark-matter scattering on nuclei is eitherdue to one-loop weak corrections or due to the heavy-quark axial charges of thenucleons. We calculate the effects of Higgs and weak gauge-boson exchanges fordark matter coupling to heavy-quark axial-vector currents in an effectivetheory below the weak scale. By explicit computation, we show that theleading-logarithmic QCD corrections are important, and thus resum them to allorders using the renormalization group.