Mononeutrino at DUNE: New signals from neutrinophilic thermal dark matter

Abstract

We introduce the mononeutrino signal at neutrino detectors as a smoking gun of sub-GeV scale dark matter candidates that mainly interact with standard model neutrinos. In a mononeutrino process, invisible particles, either dark matter themselves or the mediator particle, are radiated off a neutrino when it undergoes the charged-current weak interaction. The associated signals include a missing transverse momentum with respect to the incoming neutrino beam direction and the production of wrong-sign charged leptons. We demonstrate the potential leading role of the future DUNE experiment, using its proposed liquid and gas argon near detectors, in probing these new signals and the thermal origins of neutrinophilic dark matter.