The Inert Higgs Doublet model (IDM), assisted by Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry, offers a simple but natural framework of a dark sector that accommodates Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) and axion as dark matter components. Spontaneous breaking of U (1) P Q symmetry, which was originally proposed as an elegant solution to the strong charge-parity (CP) problem, also ensures the stability of WIMP through a residual Z 2 symmetry. Interestingly, additional fields necessitated by PQ symmetry further enrich the dark sector. These include a scalar field proprietor for axion DM and a vector-like quark (VLQ) that acts as a portal for the dark sector through Yukawa interactions. Moreover, this combination of the axion and WIMP components satisfies the observed DM relic density and reopens the phenomenologically exciting region of the IDM parameter space where the WIMP mass falls between 100 -550 GeV. We investigate the model-independent pair production of VLQs exploring this region at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), incorporating the effects of next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections. After production, each VLQ decays into a top or bottom quark accompanied by an inert scalar, a consequence of the residual Z 2 symmetry. Utilising relevant observables with a leptonic search channel and employing multivariate analysis, we demonstrate the ability of this analysis to exclude a significant portion of the parameter space with an integrated luminosity of 300 fb −1 .

We explore a two-component dark matter scenario in an extended Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov (KSVZ) axion framework. This hybrid setup incorporates an extra SU(2)L complex singlet scalar whose lightest component plays the role of one of the dark matter, while the QCD axion of the KSVZ model acts as a second dark matter candidate. In this work, we focus on accentuating the role of vector-like quark that naturally emerges in the KSVZ extension on the dark matter and collider phenomenology. Here, we demonstrate that the presence of this colored particle can significantly affect the allowed dark matter parameter space of the scalar dark matter by opening up additional co-annihilation as well as the direct detection channels. Moreover, the interaction between the color particle with the top quark and scalar dark matter provides a unique topology to generate a boosted-top pair with considerable missing transverse momentum at the LHC. Using jet substructure variables and multivariate analysis, here we show that one can already exclude a vast region of parameter space with 139 fb−1 integrated luminosity at 14 TeV LHC.