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$SU(4)$ Flavorful Portal Matter

In this paper, we present a model which attempts to unify a new dark sector force with a local $SU(3)$ flavor symmetry. Dark Matter (DM) and its potential interactions with the Standard Model (SM) continue to present a rich framework for model building. In the case of thermal DM of a mass between a few MeV and a few GeV, a compelling and much-explored framework is that of a dark photon/vector portal, which posits a new $U(1)$ "dark photon" which only couples to the SM via small kinetic mixing (KM) with the SM hypercharge. This mixing can be mediated at the one-loop level by portal matter (PM) fields which are charged under both the dark $U(1)$ and the SM gauge group. In earlier work, one of the authors has noted that models with appropriate portal matter content to produce finite and calculable kinetic mixing can arise from non-minimal dark sectors, in which the dark $U(1)$ is a subgroup of a larger gauge symmetry under which SM particles might have non-trivial representations. We expand on this idea here by constructing a model in which in which the dark $U(1)$ is unified with another popular extension to the SM gauge group, a local $SU(3)$ flavor symmetry. The full dark/flavor symmetry group is $SU(4)_F \times U(1)_F$, incorporating the local $SU(3)$ flavor symmetry with PM appearing as a vector-like "fourth generation" to supplement the three generations of the SM. To ensure finite contributions to KM, the SM gauge group is arranged into Pati-Salam multiplets. The new extended dark gauge group presents a variety of interesting experimental signatures, including non-trivial consequences of the flavor symmetry being unified with the dark sector.