Light dark Higgs boson in minimal sub-GeV dark matter scenarios

Minimal scenarios with light (sub-GeV) dark matter whose relic density is obtained from thermal freeze-out must include new light mediators. In particular, a very well-motivated case is that of a new "dark" massive vector gauge boson mediator. The mass term for such mediator is most naturally obtained by a "dark Higgs mechanism" which leads to the presence of an often long-lived dark Higgs boson whose mass scale is the same as that of the mediator. We study the phenomenology and experimental constraints on two minimal, self-consistent dark sectors that include such a light dark Higgs boson. In one the dark matter is a pseudo-Dirac fermion, in the other a complex scalar. We find that the constraints from BBN and CMB are considerably relaxed in the framework of such minimal dark sectors. We present detection prospects for the dark Higgs boson in existing and projected proton beam-dump experiments. We show that future searches at experiments like Xenon1T or LDMX can probe all the relevant parameter space, complementing the various upcoming indirect constraints from astrophysical observations.