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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Cosmic-ray cooling in active galactic nuclei as a new probe of inelastic dark matter

R. Andrew Gustafson1,2,*, Gonzalo Herrera1,†, Mainak Mukhopadhyay3,‡, Kohta Murase3,4,§, and Ian M. Shoemaker1,∥

  • *Contact author: gustafr@vt.edu
  • †Contact author: gonzaloherrera@vt.edu
  • ‡Contact author: mkm7190@psu.edu
  • §Contact author: murase@psu.edu
  • ∥Contact author: shoemaker@vt.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 111, L121303 – Published 25 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5m57-vgt2

Abstract

We present a novel way to probe inelastic dark matter using cosmic-ray (CR) cooling in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Dark matter (DM) in the vicinity of supermassive black holes may scatter off CRs, resulting in the rapid cooling of CRs for sufficiently large cross sections. This in turn can alter the high-energy neutrino and gamma-ray fluxes detected from these sources. We show that AGN cooling bounds obtained through the multimessenger data of NGC 1068 and TXS 0506+056 allows us to reach unprecedently large mass splittings for inelastic DM (≳TeV), orders of magnitude larger than those probed by direct detection experiments and DM capture in neutron stars. Furthermore, we demonstrate that cooling bounds from AGNs can probe thermal light DM with small mass splittings. This provides novel and complementary constraints in parts of a parameter space accessible solely by colliders and beam-dump experiments.

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Information

Phys. Rev. D 111, L121303– Published 25 June, 2025
  • Received 4 September 2024
  • Revised 24 March 2025
  • Accepted 4 June 2025
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