Prospects for Light Dark Matter Searches at Large-Volume Neutrino Detectors

Abstract

We propose a new approach to search for light dark matter (DM), with keV-GeV mass, via inelastic nucleus scattering at large-volume neutrino detectors such as Borexino, DUNE, Super-K, Hyper-K, and JUNO. The approach uses inelastic nuclear scattering of cosmic-ray boosted DM, enabling a low background search for DM in these experiments. Large neutrino detectors, with higher thresholds than dark matter detectors, can be used, since the nuclear deexcitation lines are O(10) MeV. Using a hadrophilic dark-gauge-boson-portal model as a benchmark, we show that the nuclear inelastic channels generally provide better sensitivity than the elastic scattering for a large region of light DM parameter space.

8 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• New constraints on cosmic ray-boosted dark matter from the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment
• Prospects of detecting cosmic ray up-scattered dark matter with DUNE
• On the impact of heavy meson production spectra on searches for heavy neutral leptons
• Sub-GeV Dark Matter Direct Detection with Neutrino Observatories
• Testable Flavored TeV-scale Resonant Leptogenesis with MeV-GeV Dark Matter in a Neutrinophilic 2HDM
• Dark Matter Internal Pair Production -- A Novel Direct Detection Mechanism
• Nuclear and electron scattering by neutrinos and dark matter in condensed systems
• Monophotons from Scalar Portal Dark Matter at Neutrino Experiments