No Arabic abstract
We entertain the exotic possibility that dark matter (DM) decays or annihilations taking place in our galaxy may produce a flux of relativistic very weakly-coupled bosons, axions or dark photons. We show that there exist several upper bounds for this flux on Earth assuming generic minimal requirements for DM, such as a lifetime longer than the age of the Universe or an annihilation rate that leaves unaffected the background evolution during matter domination. These bounds do not depend on the identity or the couplings of the bosons. We then show that this new flux cannot be large enough to explain the recent XENON1T excess, while assuming that the bosons couplings to the Standard Model are consistent with all current experimental and observational constraints. We also discuss a possible caveat to these bounds and a route to explain the excess.
We show that electron recoils induced by non-relativistic Dark Matter interactions can fit well the recently reported Xenon1T excess, if they are mediated by a light pseudo-scalar in the MeV range. This is due to the favorable momentum-dependence of the resulting scattering rate, which partially compensates the unfavorable kinematics that tends to strongly suppress keV electron recoils. We study the phenomenology of the mediator and identify the allowed parameter space of the Xenon1T excess which is compatible with all experimental limits. We also find that the anomalous magnetic moments $(g-2)_{mu,e}$ of muons and electrons can be simultaneously explained in this scenario, at the prize of a fine-tuning in the couplings of the order of a few percent.
Very recently, the Xenon1T collaboration has reported an intriguing electron recoil excess, which may imply for light dark matter. In order to interpret this anomaly, we propose the atmospheric dark matter (ADM) from the inelastic collision of cosmic rays (CRs) with the atmosphere. Due to the boost effect of high energy CRs, we show that the light ADM can be fast-moving and successfully fit the observed electron recoil spectrum through the ADM-electron scattering process. Meanwhile, our ADM predicts the scattering cross section $sigma_e sim {cal O}(10^{-38}- 10^{-39}$) cm$^{2}$, and thus can evade other direct detection constraints. The search for light meson rare decays, such as $eta to pi + slashed E_T$, would provide a complementary probe of our ADM in the future.
We show that the electron recoil excess around 2 keV claimed by the Xenon collaboration can be fitted by DM or DM-like particles having a fast component with velocity of order $sim 0.1$. Those particles cannot be part of the cold DM halo of our Galaxy, so we speculate about their possible nature and origin, such as fast moving DM sub-haloes, semi-annihilations of DM and relativistic axions produced by a nearby axion star. Feasible new physics scenarios must accommodate exotic DM dynamics and unusual DM properties.
We propose a self-interacting boosted dark matter (DM) scenario as a possible origin of the recently reported excess of electron recoil events by the XENON1T experiment. The Standard Model has been extended with two vector-like fermion singlets charged under a dark $U(1)_D$ gauge symmetry to describe the dark sector. While the presence of light vector boson mediator leads to sufficient DM self-interactions to address the small scale issues of cold dark matter, the model with GeV scale DM can explain the XENON1T excess via scattering of boosted DM component with electrons at the detector. The requirement of large annihilation rate of heavier DM into the lighter one for sufficient boosted DM flux leads to suppressed thermal relic abundance. A hybrid setup of thermal and non-thermal contribution from late decay of a scalar can lead to correct relic abundance. All these requirements leave a very tiny parameter space for sub-GeV DM keeping the model very predictive for near future experiments.
Recently, the XENON1T experiment has observed an excess in the electronic recoil data in the recoil energy range of $1$-$7$ keV. One of the most favored new physics interpretations is electron scattering with a boosted particle with a velocity of $sim 0.1$ and a mass of $gtrsim 0.1,mathrm{MeV}$. If such a particle has a strong interaction with electrons, it may affect the standard scenario of cosmology or be observed at low-threshold direct detection experiments. We study various constraints, mainly focusing on those from the big-bang nucleosynthesis, supernova cooling, and direct detection experiments. We discuss the implication of these constraints on electron-scattering interpretation of the XENON1T excess.