Abstract
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 previously found (which assumed constant cross sections) by many orders of magnitude at low DM mass. Finally, we compute the "neutrino-floor" that will limit future direct detection searches for cosmic ray-upscattered dark matter. While we focus on vector interactions for illustration, we emphasize that the energy dependence is critical in determining accurate bounds on any particle physics model of Dark Matter-CR interactions from experimental data on this scenario.
Highlights
The existence of a nonluminous class of matter dubbed dark matter (DM) has been firmly established, albeit only on the basis of its gravitational impact on visible matter
In this work we adopt the recent analysis of neutrino-nucleus scattering analyzed in [40], which closely resembles the physical situation of cosmic-ray scattered dark matter due to the relativistic nature of the incident neutrinos
In this paper we considered the impact of realistic energy dependence on the flux and scattering rate of cosmic rays (CRs)-boosted DM
Summary
The existence of a nonluminous class of matter dubbed dark matter (DM) has been firmly established, albeit only on the basis of its gravitational impact on visible matter. The same interactions with ordinary matter allow high energy cosmic rays (CRs) to scatter on background DM. In this work we adopt the recent analysis of neutrino-nucleus scattering analyzed in [40], which closely resembles the physical situation of cosmic-ray scattered dark matter due to the relativistic nature of the incident neutrinos. This approach incorporates the momentum of the interacting nucleon, rather than treating it as being at rest, and does not include contributions from nuclear states whose spin is flipped, which would not be present in the coherent scattering process.
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