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Neutron disappearance and the LZ nuclear recoil event
- 1Department of Physics , The University of Osaka , Japan
- 2Dipartimento di Fisica , Università di Pisa , Italia
Abstract
The LZ experiment reported a nuclear recoil with anomalous energy ER=248 keV, around the typical neutron motion in xenon. This motivates interpreting the event as the disappearance of a bound neutron, either through spontaneous decay or a dark-matter-induced reaction. If the energy released is large, the predicted recoil spectrum is broad around the observed value; only ∼10% of xenon events avoid extra nuclear activity; the disappearance rate is target-independent and mildly constrained by oxygen experiments. In the special case of near-threshold DM-induced neutron disappearance, it can be open in xenon and closed in oxygen, the quiet fraction rises to ∼30%, the recoil spectrum turns into lines.
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BibTeX
@misc{aghaie2026neutron,
title = {{Neutron disappearance and the LZ nuclear recoil event}},
author = {Mohammad Aghaie and Алессандро Струмиа},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.09037},
eprint = {2609.09037},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09037},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Neutron disappearance and the LZ nuclear recoil event
AU - Mohammad Aghaie
AU - Алессандро Струмиа
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/08
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.09037
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09037
AB - The LZ experiment reported a nuclear recoil with anomalous energy E_R=248 keV, around the typical neutron motion in xenon. This motivates interpreting the event as the disappearance of a bound neutron, either through spontaneous decay or a dark-matter-induced reaction. If the energy released is large, the predicted recoil spectrum is broad around the observed value; only ∼10% of xenon events avoid extra nuclear activity; the disappearance rate is target-independent and mildly constrained by oxygen experiments. In the special case of near-threshold DM-induced neutron disappearance, it can be open in xenon and closed in oxygen, the quiet fraction rises to ∼30%, the recoil spectrum turns into lines.
SN - 2331-8422
ER -