LUX-ZEPLIN's Stairway to Heaνen: limits on elastic scatters of dark matter from solar capture
Abstract
The recent report of xenon recoiling with about 250 keV energy at the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter direct detection experiment was interpreted by the collaboration as either a momentum-dependent elastic scatter or an inelastic scatter. In this study, we take elastic operators listed by LZ that fit the datum to better than 3σ, and perform a log-likelihood analysis using the reported significances to reverse-engineer their best-fit Wilson coefficients. We then estimate for each operator the rate of dark matter capturing in the Sun, and assuming self-annihilations of the captured population to various Standard Model final states studied by IceCube, we place limits on them from measurements at IceCube and Super-Kamiokande of the fluxes of solar-direction and atmospheric neutrinos. We show that large ranges of dark matter masses around the weak scale that explain the LZ event are ruled out in this scenario, with the strongest limits placed by direct annihilations to neutrino-antineutrino final states.
Related
- Solar capture and annihilation of fermionic and scalar dark matter motivated by the LUX-ZEPLIN high-recoil candidate
- Elastic toroidal vector dark matter through a dark photon in the LUX-ZEPLIN high recoil window
- Searches for Light Dark Matter and Evidence of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering of Solar Neutrinos with the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment
- Escaping Solar Capture: Majoron mediated Elastic Dark Matter for the LZ 248~keV Event
- Stairway to discovery: a report on the CMS programme of cross section measurements from millibarns to femtobarns
BibTeX
@misc{bose2026luxzeplins,
title = {{LUX-ZEPLIN's Stairway to Hea$ν$en: limits on elastic scatters of dark matter from solar capture}},
author = {Debajit Bose and Thong T. Q. Nguyen and Akash Kumar Saha and Nirmal Raj and Tarak Nath Maity and Ranjan Laha},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.21823},
eprint = {2609.21823},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21823},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - LUX-ZEPLIN's Stairway to Heaνen: limits on elastic scatters of dark matter from solar capture
AU - Debajit Bose
AU - Thong T. Q. Nguyen
AU - Akash Kumar Saha
AU - Nirmal Raj
AU - Tarak Nath Maity
AU - Ranjan Laha
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.21823
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21823
AB - The recent report of xenon recoiling with about 250 keV energy at the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter direct detection experiment was interpreted by the collaboration as either a momentum-dependent elastic scatter or an inelastic scatter. In this study, we take elastic operators listed by LZ that fit the datum to better than 3σ, and perform a log-likelihood analysis using the reported significances to reverse-engineer their best-fit Wilson coefficients. We then estimate for each operator the rate of dark matter capturing in the Sun, and assuming self-annihilations of the captured population to various Standard Model final states studied by IceCube, we place limits on them from measurements at IceCube and Super-Kamiokande of the fluxes of solar-direction and atmospheric neutrinos. We show that large ranges of dark matter masses around the weak scale that explain the LZ event are ruled out in this scenario, with the strongest limits placed by direct annihilations to neutrino-antineutrino final states.
ER -