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WIMP-type dark matter may have additional interactions that break baryon number, leading to induced nucleon decays which are subject to direct experimental constraints from proton decay experiments. In this work, we analyze the possibility of continuous baryon destruction, deriving strong limits from the dark matter accumulating inside old neutron stars, as such a process leads to excess heat generation. We construct the simplest particle dark matter model that breaks the baryon and lepton numbers separately but conserves

B - L

. Virtual exchange by DM particles in this model results in dinucleon decay via

n n \to n \bar{ν}

and

n p \to n e^{+}

processes. Published by the American Physical Society2025

Probing earth-bound dark matter with nuclear reactors

https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2024)094

Ema, Yohei; Pospelov, Maxim; Ray, Anupam (July 2024, Journal of High Energy Physics)

A<sc>bstract</sc> Strongly-interacting dark matter can be accumulated in large quantities inside the Earth, and for dark matter particles in a few GeV mass range, it can exist in large quantities near the Earth’s surface. We investigate the constraints imposed on such dark matter properties by its upscattering by fast neutrons in nuclear reactors with subsequent scattering in nearby well-shielded dark matter detectors, schemes which are already used for searches of the coherent reactor neutrino scattering. We find that the existing experiments cover new parameter space on the spin-dependent interaction between dark matter and the nucleon. Similar experiments performed with research reactors, and lesser amount of shielding, may provide additional sensitivity to strongly-interacting dark matter.

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