# Cosmic-ray boosted inelastic dark matter from neutrino-emitting active galactic nuclei

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how cosmic rays interacting with dark matter in active galactic nuclei can produce boosted dark matter particles detectable on Earth, providing new constraints on light and inelastic dark matter models.

## Contribution

It calculates the flux of boosted dark matter from specific active galactic nuclei considering realistic cosmic-ray distributions and dark sector properties, deriving novel experimental bounds.

## Key findings

- Cosmic-ray boosted dark matter can probe otherwise inaccessible parameter space.
- New bounds on light and inelastic dark matter models from AGN sources.
- Potential to test dark matter relic abundance scenarios.

## Abstract

Cosmic rays may scatter off dark matter particles in active galactic nuclei, where both the densities of cosmic rays and dark matter are expected to be very large. These scatterings could yield a flux of boosted dark matter particles directly detectable on Earth, which enhances the sensitivity of dark matter direct detection and neutrino experiments to light and inelastic dark matter models. Here we calculate the cosmic-ray boosted dark matter flux from the neutrino-emitting active galactic nuclei, NGC 1068 and TXS 0506+056, by considering realistic cosmic-ray distributions, deep inelastic scatterings, and mass splittings in the dark sector. From this we derive novel bounds from these sources on light and/or inelastic dark matter models with Super-K and XENONnT. We find that cosmic-ray boosted dark matter from neutrino-emitting active galactic nuclei can test regions of parameter space favored to reproduce the observed relic abundance of dark matter in the Universe, and that are otherwise experimentally inaccessible.