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PreprintarXiv licencearXiv

Cosmic ray boosted dark matter with momentum dependent interactions can explain the LZ 248 keV event

  • Matti Heikinheimo1,2
  • Niklas Zimmermann
  1. 1Department of Physics , P.O.Box 64 , FI-00014 University of Helsinki , Finland
  2. 2Helsinki Institute of Physics , P.O.Box 64 , FI-00014
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Abstract

The LZ experiment has recently reported an observation of a single event with characteristics of a nuclear recoil at a high recoil energy of 248 keV, where no background events are expected. We show that such nuclear recoil event could be caused by high velocity dark matter particles originating from interactions with energetic cosmic rays. We analyze the expected recoil spectrum due to cosmic ray boosted dark matter within the non-relativistic effective theory formalism, and show that momentum-dependent operators, such as π’ͺ6 and π’ͺ10, can produce a spectrum that peaks at the observed energy.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{heikinheimo2026cosmic,
  title = {{Cosmic ray boosted dark matter with momentum dependent interactions can explain the LZ 248 keV event}},
  author = {Matti Heikinheimo and Niklas Zimmermann},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.11600},
  eprint = {2609.11600},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11600},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - Cosmic ray boosted dark matter with momentum dependent interactions can explain the LZ 248 keV event
AU  - Matti Heikinheimo
AU  - Niklas Zimmermann
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/10
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.11600
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11600
AB  - The LZ experiment has recently reported an observation of a single event with characteristics of a nuclear recoil at a high recoil energy of 248 keV, where no background events are expected. We show that such nuclear recoil event could be caused by high velocity dark matter particles originating from interactions with energetic cosmic rays. We analyze the expected recoil spectrum due to cosmic ray boosted dark matter within the non-relativistic effective theory formalism, and show that momentum-dependent operators, such as π’ͺ_6 and π’ͺ_10, can produce a spectrum that peaks at the observed energy.
SN  - 2331-8422
ER  -