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arXiv · 2606.12535

Directional dark matter signatures of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Javier Reynoso-Cordova·Nassim Bozorgnia·Marie-Cécile Piro
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Abstract

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the most massive satellite of the Milky Way (MW), can significantly perturb the local dark matter (DM) distribution. We study its impact on directional DM detection using the Auriga cosmological simulations of a MW analogue hosting an LMC analogue. We find that the LMC induces strong anisotropies in directional recoil signals, driven primarily by the non-zero mean azimuthal velocity of the local DM distribution. The characteristic ring-like feature predicted in the Standard Halo Model (SHM) for heavy DM and low recoil energies is strongly distorted, producing an asymmetric recoil pattern concentrated at preferred azimuthal angles. Differences between recoil maps for the MW-LMC analogue and the SHM reach up to $\sim80\%$ near the signal maximum. These distortions significantly enhance directional discovery prospects, reducing the number of events required to reject isotropy by nearly a factor of five for a 100 GeV DM particle in a near-future CYGNUS-like experiment, and by even larger factors for heavier DM. Our results highlight the importance of the LMC for interpreting and optimizing future directional DM searches.

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Javier Reynoso-Cordova, Nassim Bozorgnia, Marie-Cécile Piro. 2026-06-10. Directional dark matter signatures of the Large Magellanic Cloud. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12535

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