Boosted dark matter from semi-annihilations in the galactic center

Boris Betancourt Kamenetskaia; Motoko Fujiwara; Alejandro Ibarra; Takashi Toma

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139425

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arXiv · 2501.12117

Boosted dark matter from semi-annihilations in the galactic center

Boris Betancourt Kamenetskaia·Motoko Fujiwara·Alejandro Ibarra·Takashi Toma

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Abstract

In some scenarios, the dark matter relic abundance is set by the semi-annihilation of two dark matter particles into one dark matter particle and one Standard Model particle. These semi-annihilations might still be occurring today in the Galactic Center at a significant rate, generating a flux of boosted dark matter particles. We investigate the possible signals of this flux component in direct detection and neutrino experiments for sub-GeV dark matter masses. We show that for typical values of the semi-annihilation cross-section, the sensitivity of current experiments to the spin-independent dark matter-proton scattering cross-section can be several orders of magnitude larger than current constraints from cosmic-ray boosted dark matter. We also argue that the upcoming DARWIN and DUNE experiments may probe scattering cross-sections as low as $10^{-37}\,{\rm cm}^2$ for masses between 30 MeV and 1 GeV.

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Boris Betancourt Kamenetskaia, Motoko Fujiwara, Alejandro Ibarra, Takashi Toma. 2025-01-21. Boosted dark matter from semi-annihilations in the galactic center. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139425

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