Speeding Up Dark Matter With Solar Neutrinos

Abstract

We present a novel mechanism of using solar neutrinos to speed up dark matter, inspired by the fact that neutrinos are the most energetic particles from the Sun with a well-understood spectrum. In a neutrino portal dark sector model, we show that dark matter with sub-GeV mass could be accelerated by the $pp$ neutrinos to velocities well above $10^{-3}c$ and capable of depositing large enough energy at direct detection experiments. A crucial ingredient of this mechanism is the dissociation of stable dark matter bound states that exist in Nature. The resulting dark matter velocity distribution bears a strong resemblance in shape to the solar neutrino spectrum. As an application, we derive a leading limit on light dark matter interaction by reinterpreting a recent PICO experiment result.

10 pages, 3 figures. Final version to appear in PTEP

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• NGC 1068 constraints on neutrino-dark matter scattering
• Azimuthal asymmetry in cosmic-ray boosted dark matter flux
• Revisiting the Fermionic Dark Matter Absorption on Electron Target
• Searching for Afterglow: Light Dark Matter Boosted by Supernova Neutrinos
• Dark Matter from Monogem
• Search for boosted keV-MeV light dark matter particles from evaporating primordial black holes at the CDEX-10 experiment
• Detecting neutrino-boosted axion dark matter in the MeV gap