Self-Destructing Dark Matter

Abstract

We present Self-Destructing Dark Matter (SDDM), a new class of dark matter models which are detectable in large neutrino detectors. In this class of models, a component of dark matter can transition from a long-lived state to a short-lived one by scattering off of a nucleus or an electron in the Earth. The short-lived state then decays to Standard Model particles, generating a dark matter signal with a visible energy of order the dark matter mass rather than just its recoil. This leads to striking signals in large detectors with high energy thresholds. We present a few examples of models which exhibit self destruction, all inspired by bound state dynamics in the Standard Model. The models under consideration exhibit a rich phenomenology, possibly featuring events with one, two, or even three lepton pairs, each with a fixed invariant mass and a fixed energy, as well as non-trivial directional distributions. This motivates dedicated searches for dark matter in large underground detectors such as Super-K, Borexino, SNO+, and DUNE.

23 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Co-SIMP Miracle
• Direct Detection Signals from Absorption of Fermionic Dark Matter
• Signatures of Mirror Stars
• Absorption of Sub-MeV Fermionic Dark Matter by Electron Targets
• Prospects for Detecting Boosted Dark Matter in DUNE through Hadronic Interactions
• Explaining the ANITA Anomaly with Inelastic Boosted Dark Matter
• Speeding Up Dark Matter With Solar Neutrinos
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• Mineral Detection of Neutrinos and Dark Matter. A Whitepaper
• Self Destructing Atomic DM
• Detecting Dark Photons from Atomic Rearrangement in the Galaxy
• Ultraheavy Atomic Dark Matter Freeze-Out through Rearrangement
• Dark, deep, deconfining: Phase transitions in neutron stars as powerful probes of hidden sectors