Multi-lepton Signatures of a Hidden Sector in Rare B Decays

Abstract

We explore the sensitivity of flavour changing b -> s transitions to a (sub-)GeV hidden sector with generic couplings to the Standard Model through the Higgs, vector and axion portals. The underlying two-body decays of B mesons, B -> X_s S and B0 -> SS, where S denotes a generic new GeV-scale particle, may significantly enhance the yield of monochromatic lepton pairs in the final state via prompt decays of S to a dilepton pair. Existing measurements of the charged lepton spectrum in neutral-current semileptonic B decays provide bounds on the parameters of the light sector that are significantly more stringent than the requirements of naturalness. New search modes, such as B -> X_s + n(l+l-) and B0 -> n(l+l-) with n > 1 can provide additional sensitivity to scenarios in which both the Higgs and vector portals are active, and are accessible to (super-)B factories and hadron colliders.