Testing Higgs-Coupled Minimal Dark Matter with Solar Neutrinos after the LZ High-Recoil Event

arXiv:2609.19174 · hep-ph, astro-ph.HE, hep-th · Submitted 2026-09-14 · Read on arXiv

hep-ph, astro-ph.HE, hep-th

Submitted: 2026-09-14

Updated: 2026-09-14

Comments: 29 pages, 11 figures and 6 tables. Comments are welcome!

License: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

The gist: The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a nuclear-recoil candidate at 248 keV, motivating interpretations in terms of endothermic dark matter (DM).

Terminology

Abstract

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration has reported a nuclear-recoil candidate at 248 keV, motivating interpretations in terms of endothermic dark matter (DM). We investigate this signal in Higgs-coupled minimal dark matter (HC-MDM), where the same electroweak interaction responsible for the terrestrial recoil also induces DM capture in the Sun and a potentially observable high-energy neutrino signal. We independently determine the mass splittings required to reproduce the LZ event and perform an improved calculation of Solar capture and post-capture evolution. Our treatment includes natural isotope mixtures, exact inelastic kinematics, nuclear form factors, finite-temperature nuclear motion near kinematic closure, orbital cooling through loop-induced elastic scattering, and an explicit capture--annihilation equilibrium test. The resulting Solar predictions are numerically stable and robust against the astrophysical and nuclear variations considered. For the two thermal benchmarks within the released IceCube DM mass grid, 3 M2 D and 5 M4 D, the predicted annihilation rates exceed the mass-matched W+W- IceCube response by factors of approximately 2.2 times10 cubed and 91, placing both standard-halo solutions under strong tension within the W+W- response mapping used here. For the heavier representations, whose masses lie above the published 10 TeV IceCube grid, we construct a response-based extrapolation to higher masses. The 22 TeV 7 M6 D benchmark remains in strong tension with IceCube even under our conservative response-loss extrapolation, while the 48 TeV 9 M8 D benchmark also remains above the extrapolated response, although much closer to the sensitivity boundary. The 82 TeV 11 M10 D benchmark is response dependent, whereas the 130 TeV 13 M12 D benchmark remains below the extrapolated IceCube sensitivity.

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