Leptonic New Force and Cosmic-ray Boosted Dark Matter for the XENON1T Excess

TL;DR

This paper proposes new leptonic forces as an explanation for the XENON1T excess, involving scenarios with and without dark matter, and suggests astrophysical tests via infrared telescopes.

Contribution

It introduces two novel leptonic force scenarios that explain the XENON1T excess and predicts observable astrophysical signatures.

Findings

Leptonic forces can account for the XENON1T excess.

Boosted dark matter from cosmic rays can produce recoil signals.

Neutron star heating offers a testable astrophysical signature.

Abstract

The recently reported excess in XENON1T is explained by new leptonic forces, which are free from gauge anomalies. We focus on two scenarios with and without dark matter. In Scenario #1, the gauge boson of gauged lepton number U(1)$_{L_e-L_j}$, $j=\mu$ or $\tau$ provides non-standard interaction between solar neutrino and electron that enhances the number of electron recoil events in the XENON1T detector. In Scenario #2, the new gauge boson exclusively couples to electron and dark matter, then cosmic-ray electrons can transfer their momenta to dark matter in halo. The boosted dark matter generates the electron recoil signals of ${\cal O}(1)$ keV. The dark matter, aided by the new gauge interaction, efficiently heats up a neutron star in our Galaxy more than $\sim1500$ K as a neutron star captures the halo dark matter. Therefore, we propose to utilize the future infrared telescope to test our scenario.