Azimuthal asymmetry in cosmic-ray boosted dark matter flux

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that cosmic-ray boosted dark matter flux exhibits a unique azimuthal asymmetry, which can be used to improve detection constraints and potentially observe symmetry-breaking effects in future experiments.

Contribution

It introduces the novel idea that CRDM flux has a significant azimuthal asymmetry, unlike other models, and derives the most stringent constraints using Super-Kamiokande data, predicting future observability.

Findings

CRDM flux shows significant azimuthal asymmetry.

New constraints on DM-electron scattering cross section are over ten times more stringent.

Future Hyper-Kamiokande could observe the asymmetry at about 3 sigma.

Abstract

Light halo dark matter (DM) particles up-scattered by high-energy cosmic rays (referred to as CRDM) can be energetic and become detectable at conventional DM and neutrino experiments. We show that the CRDM flux has a novel and detectable morphological feature. Unlike most of the recently proposed boosted DM (BDM) models which predict azimuthally symmetric DM fluxes around the Galactic Center, the CRDM flux breaks the azimuthal symmetry significantly. Using cosmic-ray electron distribution in the whole Galaxy and optimized search region in the sky according to the morphology of the CRDM flux, we derive so far the most stringent constraints on the DM-electron scattering cross section from the Super-Kamiokande (SK) IV data, which improves the previous constraints from the SK-IV full-sky data by more than an order of magnitude. Based on the improved constraints, we predict that the azimuthal symmetry-breaking effect can be observed in the future Hyper-Kamiokande experiment at $\sim 3\sigma$ level.