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Probing inelastic sub-GeV dark matter at the DUNE near detector

Amalia Betancur1,*, Gustavo Castrillón2,†, and Óscar Zapata2,‡

  • *Contact author: amalia.betancur@eia.edu.co
  • †Contact author: gadolfo.castrillon@udea.edu.co
  • ‡Contact author: oalberto.zapata@udea.edu.co
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 043007 – Published 4 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fyr4-tqp8

Abstract

We study inelastic dark matter (iDM) in a minimal and ultraviolet-complete framework in which the dark photon mass arises from a dark Higgs mechanism. The spontaneous breaking of a U(1)D symmetry splits the Dirac fermion into two Majorana states, thus opening new annihilation channels mediated by the dark Higgs. Focusing on sub-GeV dark matter, we assess the sensitivity of DUNE’s liquid argon cube at the near detector (ND-LAr) to this scenario. We find that the ND-LAr can probe regions of parameter space consistent with the observed relic abundance due to these new annihilation channels, particularly for large dark photon-to-DM mass ratios where decay-based searches lose sensitivity. Our results highlight the complementarity between cosmological constraints and fixed-target experiments and demonstrate the potential of DUNE’s ND-LAr to explore iDM scenarios with extended dark sectors.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 043007– Published 4 August, 2026
  • Received 24 April 2026
  • Accepted 1 July 2026
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