Decaying fermionic warm dark matter and XENON1T electronic recoil excess

TL;DR

This paper investigates fermionic warm dark matter decaying into neutrinos and photons as a possible explanation for the XENON1T electronic recoil excess, constraining its parameters using data analysis and comparing with astrophysical limits.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of fermionic warm dark matter decay constraints based on XENON1T data, considering multiple background models and astrophysical bounds.

Findings

Dark matter decay parameters are constrained by XENON1T data.

Certain dark matter mass ranges are allowed at 95% confidence level.

Different background models influence the allowed parameter space.

Abstract

In the light of the recently observed XENON1T electronic recoil (ER) data, we investigate the possibility of constraining the parameter space of a generic fermionic warm dark matter (WDM), decaying into a standard model (SM) neutrino and a photon. The photon as a decay product, when produced inside the XENON1T chamber, interacts with an electron of a xenon (Xe) atom, leading to a contribution in the observed ER data. We add this dark matter (DM) induced signal over the standard background ($\rm B_0$) considered by the XENON1T collaboration and perform a $\chi^2$ fit against the XENON1T data to obtain the best-fit values of the DM decay width and the associated $95\%$ confidence level (C.L.) band for DM mass ($m_\chi$) varied in the range $2 - 60$ keV. Additionally, we have extended our analysis by including two other background models available in the literature and in each case, the corresponding limits on the DM decay width are estimated for DM mass ($m_\chi$) in the domain $2 - 18$ keV. By comparing the constraints, obtained by fitting the XENON1T data, with the upper limits arising from various existing astrophysical and cosmological observations, we find that, for the background model $\rm B_0$, a fair amount of the DM parameter space is allowed at $95\%$ C.L. for DM masses outside the range $3.5\,{\rm keV} \lesssim m_\chi \lesssim 8.5\,{\rm keV}$. However, in case of other two background models, reasonable parts of the DM parameter space are favoured at $95\%$ C.L. by all astrophysical data for all DM masses in the range $2 - 18$ keV.