Inelastic Scattering Effects on Attenuation of Boosted Dark Matter

Abstract

Earth attenuation is crucial for interpreting direct-detection constraints on boosted dark matter (DM), since scatterings with terrestrial nuclei can significantly modify the flux and energy spectrum reaching underground detectors. At boosted energies, inelastic nuclear channels beyond ordinary elastic scattering can become relevant, including quasi-elastic scattering, deep-inelastic scattering, and resonant scattering. In this work, we incorporate the resonant scattering of boosted dark matter (DM) off nuclei into the Earth-attenuation framework, in combination with the elastic, quasi-elastic, and deep-inelastic channels. We find that, in the heavy-mediator regime, resonant scattering can give a non-negligible contribution to the attenuation of boosted DM. Using the latest PandaX-4T data, we derive new constraints on the spin-independent boosted DM-nucleon cross section $\barσ_n$.