Cosmic-ray boosted dark matter in Xe-based direct detection experiments

Abstract

Abstract LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) collaboration has achieved the strongest constraint on weak-scale dark matter (DM)-nucleon spin-independent (SI) scattering cross section in a large region of parameter space. In this paper, we take a complementary approach and study the prospect of detecting cosmic-ray boosted sub-GeV DM in LZ. In the absence of a signal for DM, we improve upon the previous constraints by a factor of $$\sim 2$$ ∼ 2 using the LZ result for some regions of the parameter space. We also show that upcoming XENONnT and future Darwin experiments will be sensitive to cross sections smaller by factors of $$\sim 3$$ ∼ 3 and $$\sim 10$$ ∼ 10 compared to the current LZ limit, respectively.