Cosmic-ray-electron boosted light dark matter: Implications of LZ 2025 data

Abstract

Current multiton detectors put stringent constraints on the GeV-scale galactic dark matter, pushing the allowed cross section almost toward the neutrino fog, yet remain mostly insensitive to the light dark matter. Cosmic rays can upscatter the nonrelativistic halo dark matter particles, making a subpopulation of them gain sufficient kinetic energy to be discernible in current direct search experiments. In this work, we explore this alternate strategy to probe sub-MeV electrophilic dark matter boosted by cosmic rays with the latest data of LZ 2025 (WS2024 run). We also incorporate the attenuation effect on the boosted dark matter flux during its propagation through the Earth and perform a full numerical treatment to obtain the resulting event rate. Our result shows LZ 2025 data improve the constraint on the MeV scale dark matter by almost $\sim\mathcal{O}(1)$ compared to the previous XENONnT limit for the energy-independent cross section. Using realistic energy-dependent cross sections, we also analyze such a scenario, where the associated mediator mass plays a crucial role in governing the event rate and hence the expected limits too. With energy-dependent cross sections, our obtained limits also remain stronger than the existing constraints from the XENONnT experiment. Even compared to the limits from neutrino detectors with much larger target masses, LZ 2025 can place stringent constraints in certain regions of the mediator parameter space, particularly in the light-mediator regime, excluding previously unexplored regions.