If dark matter interacts too strongly with nuclei, it could be slowed to undetectable speeds in Earth’s crust or atmosphere before reaching a detector. For sub-GeV dark matter, approximations appropriate for heavier dark matter fail, necessitating the use of computationally expensive simulations. We present a new, analytic approximation for modeling attenuation of light dark matter in Earth. We show that our approach agrees well with Monte Carlo results, and can be much faster at large cross sections. We use this method to reanalyze constraints on subdominant dark matter.

• Received 1 February 2023
• Revised 28 April 2023
• Accepted 11 May 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.221001

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Published by the American Physical Society