PreprintCC BY 4.0arXiv
Interpreting the LZ 248 keV Event using Dark QCD
Abstract
The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a nuclear-recoil candidate with reconstructed energy 248±23stat±23sys keV. We investigate an interpretation in terms of composite inelastic dark matter, in which a dimension-ten operator splits the lightest baryon of a confining SU(3)D theory into two Majorana states. Endothermic scattering is mediated by a leptophobic vector coupled to baryon number. For a dark-baryon mass of 1 TeV and a splitting of 300 keV, a reference nucleon cross section of 6.5×10−43 cm2 lies within LZ's published two-sided 90\% confidence interval. This benchmark fixes MV/gB≃9.9 TeV, where MV and gB are the mediator mass and baryon-number gauge coupling, and is compatible with solar neutrino and dijet constraints.
Related
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- Dark Matter at the Kinematic Edge: Interpreting the 248 keV LZ Nuclear-Recoil Candidate
- Exothermic Dark Matter with a Dark Higgs: The LZ 248 keV Event and the Galactic Center Excess
- Explaining the LZ High-Energy Recoil Event with Inelastic Sneutrino Dark Matter in Supersymmetry
- Cosmic ray boosted dark matter with momentum dependent interactions can explain the LZ 248 keV event
BibTeX
@misc{sannino2026interpreting,
title = {{Interpreting the LZ 248 keV Event using Dark QCD}},
author = {Francesco Sannino and Jessica Turner},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.24988},
eprint = {2609.24988},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24988},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Interpreting the LZ 248 keV Event using Dark QCD
AU - Francesco Sannino
AU - Jessica Turner
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.24988
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24988
AB - The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a nuclear-recoil candidate with reconstructed energy 248±23_stat±23_sys keV. We investigate an interpretation in terms of composite inelastic dark matter, in which a dimension-ten operator splits the lightest baryon of a confining SU(3)_D theory into two Majorana states. Endothermic scattering is mediated by a leptophobic vector coupled to baryon number. For a dark-baryon mass of 1 TeV and a splitting of 300 keV, a reference nucleon cross section of 6.5×10^−43 cm^2 lies within LZ's published two-sided 90\% confidence interval. This benchmark fixes M_V/g_B≃9.9 TeV, where M_V and g_B are the mediator mass and baryon-number gauge coupling, and is compatible with solar neutrino and dijet constraints.
ER -