Inelastic Dark Matter and High-Energy Recoil Signatures in LZ
Abstract
We study the inelastic dark matter (iDM) that consists of two-component dark matter particles (χ1,χ2) and serves as a minimal extension beyond the commonly used one-component DM models. A distinctive feature of such iDM scattering with the target nuclei is to favorably produce signals at high nuclear recoil (NR) energy region in both exothermic and endothermic processes. In particular, for the exothermic dark matter scenario, the signal does not rely on the tail of the Boltzmann velocity distribution. As a result, the required DM-nucleus scattering cross section is significantly reduced, which in turn helps to substantially relax the stringent constraints imposed by IceCube neutrino searches. Using the inelastic DM-nucleus scattering, we naturally explain the newly reported event excess at high recoil energy with the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment.
Related
- Explaining the LZ High-Energy Recoil Event with Inelastic Sneutrino Dark Matter in Supersymmetry
- Inelastic Dark Matter Signature at High Recoil Energy in LUX-ZEPLIN and CRESST
- Inelastic Dark Matter from a Higher-Dimensional Operator: The LUX-ZEPLIN High-Recoil Event and Thermal Relic
- Inelastic Dark Photon Dark Matter for the LUX-ZEPLIN High-Recoil Event and the Galactic Halo Gamma-Ray Excess
- Effect of inelastic scalar dark matter in hidden U(1) scenario after the LZ nuclear recoil
BibTeX
@misc{fan2026inelastic,
title = {{Inelastic Dark Matter and High-Energy Recoil Signatures in LZ}},
author = {Zi-Tong Fan and Hong-Jian He and Yu-Chen Wang and Yue Zhao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.10491},
eprint = {2609.10491},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10491},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Inelastic Dark Matter and High-Energy Recoil Signatures in LZ
AU - Zi-Tong Fan
AU - Hong-Jian He
AU - Yu-Chen Wang
AU - Yue Zhao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.10491
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10491
AB - We study the inelastic dark matter (iDM) that consists of two-component dark matter particles (χ_1,χ_2) and serves as a minimal extension beyond the commonly used one-component DM models. A distinctive feature of such iDM scattering with the target nuclei is to favorably produce signals at high nuclear recoil (NR) energy region in both exothermic and endothermic processes. In particular, for the exothermic dark matter scenario, the signal does not rely on the tail of the Boltzmann velocity distribution. As a result, the required DM-nucleus scattering cross section is significantly reduced, which in turn helps to substantially relax the stringent constraints imposed by IceCube neutrino searches. Using the inelastic DM-nucleus scattering, we naturally explain the newly reported event excess at high recoil energy with the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment.
ER -