Prospects for Detecting Boosted Dark Matter in DUNE through Hadronic Interactions

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for detecting boosted dark matter in DUNE using hadronic interactions in liquid-argon detectors, developing new simulation methods and analyzing discovery prospects.

Contribution

It introduces new event generation techniques for BDM-nucleus scattering and assesses DUNE's sensitivity compared to other experiments.

Findings

DUNE has promising sensitivity to boosted dark matter.

Hadronic detection in LArTPCs enhances discovery potential.

New simulation methods improve BDM interaction modeling.

Abstract

Boosted dark matter (BDM) is a well-motivated class of dark matter (DM) candidates in which a small component of DM is relativistic at the present time. We lay the foundation for BDM searches via hadronic interactions in large liquid-argon time-projection chambers (LArTPCs), such as DUNE. We investigate BDM-nucleus scattering in detail by developing new event generation techniques with a parameterized detector simulation. We study the discovery potential in a DUNE-like experiment using the low threshold and directionality of hadron detection in LArTPCs and compare with other experiments.