Solar Capture Tests of Inelastic Dark Matter after the LZ High-Recoil Event

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a 248 keV nuclear-recoil candidate for which endothermic dark matter (DM) gives some of the largest local significances. We study Solar-capture constraints on three simple interpretations: a thermal Higgsino, a thermal pseudo-Dirac fermion with off-diagonal vector interactions, and neutron-philic endothermic spin-dependent scattering through O 4. The canonical full-density thermal Higgsino is excluded: its LZ-preferred splitting near 0.38, MeV lies below the IceCube requirement, δ 0.51 -- 0.56, MeV. For the pseudo-Dirac benchmark we find C=1.48 times10 20, s-1, but two-state kinetics strongly suppresses annihilation. Including thermally assisted χ 1 toχ 2 re-excitation gives a maximum Γ A 4.1 times10 14, s-1, about 1.8 times10 5 below the adopted IceCube b b limit. For neutron-philic O 4 scattering at m χ=1 TeV and δ=300 keV, finite-temperature capture gives C=3.98 times10 17, s-1, with spin-response range (1.77 -- 9.72) times10 17, s-1. Even in equilibrium, the upper edge remains about a factor 154 below the adopted b b limit, while an aggressive no-finite- q suppression plus upper-spin stress test still leaves a factor about 19. The b b mapping is used as a representative hadronic template for the two non-Higgsino benchmarks. Solar capture therefore excludes the thermal-Higgsino interpretation but does not generically exclude endothermic explanations of the LZ candidate.