Dirac dark matter and b to s ell^+ ell^- with U(1) gauge symmetry

We revisit the possibility of a Dirac fermion dark matter candidate in the light of current $b \to s \ell^+ \ell^-$ anomalies by investigating a minimal extension of the Standard Model with a horizontal $\mathrm{U(1)}^{\prime}$ local symmetry. Dark matter stability is protected by a remnant $\mathcal{Z}_2$ symmetry arising after spontaneous symmetry breaking of $\mathrm{U(1)}^{\prime}$. The associated $Z^{\prime}$ gauge boson can accommodate current hints of new physics in $b \to s \ell^+ \ell^-$ decays, and acts as a vector portal between dark matter and the visible sector. We find that the model is severely constrained by a combination of precision measurements at flavour factories, LHC searches for dilepton resonances, as well as direct and indirect dark matter searches. Despite this, viable regions of the parameter space accommodating the observed dark matter relic abundance and the $b \to s \ell^+ \ell^-$ anomalies still persist for dark matter and $Z^{\prime}$ masses in the TeV range.