The PADME Scientific Program

The elusiveness of dark matter has triggered innovative and open-minded approaches involving also experiments at accelerators spanning a wide range of energies with high-sensitivity detectors. In spite of the variety of attempts, up-to-now none of the conducted experiments has produced any firm evidence. In this scenario is inserted the Positron Annihilation into Dark Matter Experiment (PADME) ongoing at the Frascati National Laboratory of INFN. PADME is searching a Dark Photon signal by studying the missing mass spectrum of single-photon final states resulting from the annihilation of positrons on the electrons of a fix target. After commissioning and beam-line optimization, PADME collected in 2020 about 5$\times10^{12}$ positrons on target. Actually, the PADME approach allows to look for any new light, feebly interacting particle produced in $e^+e^-$ annihilations through a virtual off-shell photon. The scientific program of the experiment, and its current status, are here illustrated.