Speaker
Description
Direct detection experiments lose sensitivity to light dark matter because of the small energy deposition in nuclear recoil events. Scenarios where dark matter is boosted to relativistic velocities thus provide a promising means to constrain sub-GeV dark matter particles. Cosmic-ray upscattering is a particularly appealing boosting mechanism as it does not require any assumptions beyond dark matter coupling to nucleons or electrons, and there are other plausible types of boosted dark matter such as light dark matter produced in a supernova. However, observable signals are often restricted to large cross sections which can only be realized with large couplings, light mediators or composite dark matter [1,2]. We explore the signals for different types of boosted dark matter and compare and contrast their detectability in upcoming experiments [3].
[1] Nicole F. Bell, Jayden L. Newstead & Iman Shaukat Ali, Cosmic-ray boosted dark matter confronted by constraints on light mediators, Physical Review D 109, 063034 (2024)
[2] Bhaskar Dutta, Wei-Chih Huang, Doojin Kim, Jayden L. Newstead, Jong-Chul Park & Iman Shaukat Ali, Prospects for Light Dark Matter Searches at Large Volume Neutrino Detectors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 161801 (2024)
[3] Shaukat Ali et al, in preparation.
