Exothermic isospin-violating dark matter after SuperCDMS and CDEX

Abstract

We show that exothermic isospin-violating dark matter (IVDM) can make the results of the latest CDMS-Si experiment consistent with recent null experiments, such as XENON10, XENON100, LUX, CDEX, and SuperCDMS, whereas for the CoGeNT experiment, a strong tension still persists. For CDMS-Si, separate exothermic dark matter or isospin-violating dark matter cannot fully ameliorate the tensions among these experiments; the tension disappears only if exothermic scattering is combined with an isospin-violating effect of f n / f p = − 0.7 . For such exothermic IVDM to exist, at least a new vector gauge boson (dark photon or dark Z') that connects SM quarks to Majorana-type DM particles is required.