The Inert Doublet Model of Dark Matter and the LUX-ZEPLIN High-Recoil Event
Abstract
The recent LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) search reported a nuclear-recoil event near 248 keV. Such a high-recoil event can be interpreted in terms of endothermic inelastic dark matter scattering, which typically requires a mass splitting of order a few hundred keV between the initial and final dark states. The inert doublet model (IDM) provides a natural realization of this scenario through the Z-mediated transition H+N→ A+N. In this work, we systematically examine whether this interpretation can be consistently realized in the IDM under the relevant theoretical constraints and existing experimental bounds. We perform a detailed profile-likelihood analysis of the LZ event, and find a viable high-mass IDM region with a profile best fit at mH=1080 GeV and mA−mH=369 keV.
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BibTeX
@misc{wang2026inert,
title = {{The Inert Doublet Model of Dark Matter and the LUX-ZEPLIN High-Recoil Event}},
author = {Lei Wang and Yang Xiao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.06571},
eprint = {2609.06571},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06571},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Inert Doublet Model of Dark Matter and the LUX-ZEPLIN High-Recoil Event
AU - Lei Wang
AU - Yang Xiao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.06571
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06571
AB - The recent LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) search reported a nuclear-recoil event near 248 keV. Such a high-recoil event can be interpreted in terms of endothermic inelastic dark matter scattering, which typically requires a mass splitting of order a few hundred keV between the initial and final dark states. The inert doublet model (IDM) provides a natural realization of this scenario through the Z-mediated transition H+N→ A+N. In this work, we systematically examine whether this interpretation can be consistently realized in the IDM under the relevant theoretical constraints and existing experimental bounds. We perform a detailed profile-likelihood analysis of the LZ event, and find a viable high-mass IDM region with a profile best fit at m_H=1080 GeV and m_A−m_H=369 keV.
SN - 2331-8422
ER -