Discriminating Dark Matter Origins with Directional Detection
Abstract
Scenarios where dark matter is boosted to relativistic velocities provide a promising probe of sub-GeV dark matter. Cosmic-ray upscattered and supernova-produced dark matter generate relativistic fluxes peaked toward the Galactic Centre, an anisotropy that offers a strong directional signature and is not mimicked by any terrestrial or cosmic background. We determine how many directional recoil events are required in a gas time-projection chamber to distinguish various scenarios for the origin of dark matter particles arriving in the solar system, which are otherwise indistinguishable without directionality. We find that standard halo dark matter particles can be distinguished from boosted populations with as few as events under reasonable track reconstruction performance and background conditions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.10434,
title = {Discriminating Dark Matter Origins with Directional Detection},
author = {Nicole F. Bell and Chiara Lisotti and Jayden L. Newstead and Ciaran A. J. O'Hare and Iman Shaukat Ali},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.10434},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 6 figures