We study the sensitivity of the Fermilab Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) experiments, MicroBooNE, ICARUS, and SBND, to MeV- to GeV-scale inelastic dark matter interacting through a dark photon mediator. These models provide interesting scenarios of light thermal dark matter, which, while challenging to probe with direct and indirect detection experiments, are amenable to accelerator-based searches. We consider production of the dark sector states with both the Fermilab Booster 8 GeV and NuMI 120 GeV proton beams and study the signatures of scattering and decay of the heavy excited dark state in the SBN detectors. These distinct signatures probe complementary regions of parameter space. All three experiments will be able to cover new ground, with an excellent near-term opportunity to search for cosmologically motivated targets explaining the observed dark matter abundance.

中文翻译：

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费米实验室短基线中微子计划中的非弹性暗物质

我们研究了费米实验室短基线中微子 (SBN) 实验、MicroBooNE、ICARUS 和 SBND 对 MeV 到 GeV 级非弹性暗物质通过暗光子介质相互作用的敏感性。这些模型提供了有趣的光热暗物质场景，虽然直接和间接检测实验具有挑战性，但适用于基于加速器的搜索。我们考虑使用 Fermilab Booster 8 GeV 和 NuMI 120 GeV 质子束产生暗扇区态，并研究 SBN 探测器中重激发暗态的散射和衰减特征。这些不同的签名探测参数空间的互补区域。这三个实验都将能够覆盖新的领域，