Related papers: No room to hide: implications of cosmic-ray upscat…
GeV-scale dark matter particles with strong coupling to baryons evade the standard direct detection limits as they are efficiently stopped in the overburden and, consequently, are not able to reach the underground detectors. On the other…
Traditional direct detection experiments lack the sensitivity to probe the sub-GeV dark matter (DM), primarily due to the low energy of the expected nuclear recoils. In this work, we investigate cosmic-ray (CR) upscattering as a mechanism…
The detectability of light dark matter in direct detection experiments is limited by the small kinetic energy of the recoiling targets. Thus, scenarios where dark matter is boosted to relativistic velocities provide a useful tactic to…
Sub-GeV dark matter candidates are of increasing interest, because long-favored candidates such as GeV-scale WIMPs have not been detected. For low-mass dark matter, model-independent constraints are weak or nonexistent. We show that for…
Cosmic ray (CR) upscattering of dark matter is considered as one of the most straightforward mechanisms to accelerate ambient dark matter, making it detectable at high threshold, large volume experiments. In this work, we revisit CR…
Light non-relativistic components of the galactic dark matter halo elude direct detection constraints because they lack the kinetic energy to create an observable recoil. However, cosmic-rays can upscatter dark matter to significant…
We derive conservative upper limits on the dark-matter--nucleon scattering cross-section for sub-GeV mass dark matter. Working exclusively within the low-energy chiral effective theory, we derive bounds that are independent of the details…
We derive new bounds on hadronically-interacting, sub-GeV mass dark matter. First, we show that one-loop interactions with photons can be sufficient to maintain equilibrium between the dark matter and Standard Model sectors at MeV…
We calculate the scattering rate of sub-GeV dark matter in solid-state targets for spin-dependent dark matter -- nucleon interactions. For dark matter particles with mass below 100 MeV, the scattering occurs predominantly through incoherent…
The non-detection of GeV-scale WIMPs has led to increased interest in more general candidates, including sub-GeV dark matter. Direct detection experiments, despite their high sensitivity to WIMPs, are largely blind to sub-GeV dark matter.…
Sub-GeV Dark Matter particles upscattered by cosmic rays gain enough kinetic energy to pass the thresholds of large volume detectors on Earth. We then use public Super-Kamiokande and MiniBooNE data to derive a novel limit on the scattering…
We study direct detection bounds on cosmic ray-upscattered dark matter in simplified models including light mediators. We find that the energy dependence in the scattering cross section is significant, and produces stronger bounds than…
Traditional direct searches for dark matter, looking for nuclear recoils in deep underground detectors, are challenged by an almost complete loss of sensitivity for light dark matter particles. Consequently, there is a significant effort in…
Dark matter (DM) particles with mass in the sub-GeV range are an attractive alternative to heavier weakly-interacting massive particles, but direct detection of such light particles is challenging. If however DM-nucleus scattering leads to…
Current multi-ton detectors put stringent constraints on the GeV-scale galactic dark matter, pushing the allowed cross-section almost towards the neutrino fog, yet remain mostly insensitive to the light dark matter. Cosmic rays can…
Strongly-interacting dark matter can be accumulated in large quantities inside the Earth, and for dark matter particles in a few GeV mass range, it can exist in large quantities near the Earth's surface. We investigate the constraints…
Sub-MeV cold dark-matter particles are unable to produce electronic recoil in conventional dark-matter direct detection experiments such as XENONnT and LUX-ZEPLIN above the detector threshold. The mechanism of boosted dark matter comes into…
If dark matter has mass lower than around 1 GeV, it will not impart enough energy to cause detectable nuclear recoils in many direct-detection experiments. However, if dark matter is upscattered to high energy by collisions with cosmic…
The sub-keV mass range has long posed a challenge for the direct detection of dark matter via elastic scattering. In this Letter, we propose a new mechanism in which dark matter, assumed to be quadratically coupled to SM particles, scatters…
We point out a new and largely model-independent constraint on the dark matter scattering cross section with nucleons, applying when this quantity is larger than for typical weakly interacting dark matter candidates. When the dark matter…