ALP-mediated inelastic dark matter and the LUX-ZEPLIN high-recoil candidate event LZ230616
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Astronomy , School of Physical Sciences , University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei , Anhui 230026 , China
- 2School of Astronomy and Space Science , University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei , Anhui 230026 , China
- 3Key Laboratory of Dark Matter and Space Astronomy , Purple Mountain Observatory , Chinese Academy of Sciences , Nanjing 210033 , China
- 4Department of Physics , The Chinese University of Hong Kong , Shatin , New Territories , Hong Kong
Abstract
The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a high-energy candidate event LZ230616 with a reconstructed nuclear recoil energy ER=248±23stat±23sys keV. We investigate a possible interpretation in terms of inelastic scattering between two Majorana dark matter states mediated by an axionlike particle coupled to gluons. The positive mass splitting suppresses low-energy recoils, while the momentum dependence of the interaction reshapes the high-energy spectrum. We treat the dark-sector and gluonic couplings independently and retain the momentum-dependent nucleon form factors and xenon nuclear responses. Using an approximate single-event likelihood, we find that, for ma=0.3 GeV, a narrow spectrum near the candidate energy arises at mχ≃0.35 TeV and δ≃330 keV, although this configuration requires a large coupling product and is highly sensitive to the Galactic halo speed cutoff. Our analysis establishes the kinematic and coupling requirements for subsequent tests using the thermal relic abundance and laboratory constraints on the mediator.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{yuan2026alpmediated,
title = {{ALP-mediated inelastic dark matter and the LUX-ZEPLIN high-recoil candidate event LZ230616}},
author = {Guan Wen Yuan and Bo Zhang and Wen-Yu Cao and Lei Feng and Ruizhi Yang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.08893},
eprint = {2609.08893},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08893},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - ALP-mediated inelastic dark matter and the LUX-ZEPLIN high-recoil candidate event LZ230616
AU - Guan Wen Yuan
AU - Bo Zhang
AU - Wen-Yu Cao
AU - Lei Feng
AU - Ruizhi Yang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/08
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.08893
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08893
AB - The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a high-energy candidate event LZ230616 with a reconstructed nuclear recoil energy E_R=248±23_stat±23_sys keV. We investigate a possible interpretation in terms of inelastic scattering between two Majorana dark matter states mediated by an axionlike particle coupled to gluons. The positive mass splitting suppresses low-energy recoils, while the momentum dependence of the interaction reshapes the high-energy spectrum. We treat the dark-sector and gluonic couplings independently and retain the momentum-dependent nucleon form factors and xenon nuclear responses. Using an approximate single-event likelihood, we find that, for m_a=0.3 GeV, a narrow spectrum near the candidate energy arises at m_χ≃0.35 TeV and δ≃330 keV, although this configuration requires a large coupling product and is highly sensitive to the Galactic halo speed cutoff. Our analysis establishes the kinematic and coupling requirements for subsequent tests using the thermal relic abundance and laboratory constraints on the mediator.
SN - 2331-8422
ER -