We investigate a possible dark matter origin of the high-energy nuclear-recoil-like events in XENONnT and LZ data, which cannot be explained by standard elastic spin-independent WIMP scattering. Using our unified DIAMX framework, built on openly available data and likelihood models, we perform the first combined profile-likelihood fits to multiple WIMP-search datasets with a total exposure of 7.3 tonne×year. We investigate that two broad classes of dark matter nucleon interactions, with velocity-dependent cross-section or inelastic (endo- and exothermic) scattering, can reproduce the observed high-energy recoil spectrum, reaching local significances up to 4σ. We further quantify the impact of 124Xe double electron capture (DEC) backgrounds, finding that variations in the poorly known DEC charge yields can shift the inferred significances from below 1σ to 4σ. We point out that extending the same analysis to XENONnT and LZ data with recoil energies up to 300 keV, once available, will provide a powerful test of the dark matter interpretation, since the 124Xe DEC background is expected to be negligible in this high-energy range.
@article{arxiv.2512.05850,
title = {Dark matter implications from the XENONnT and LZ data},
author = {Haipeng An and Fei Gao and Jia Liu and Minghao Liu and Haoming Nie and Changlong Xu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.05850},
year = {2025}
}