A new study proposes an electroweak dark matter model that could explain the high-energy inelastic nuclear recoil events recently reported by the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration. This model extends minimal electroweak dark matter with a Majorana and a Dirac multiplet, coupled through Higgs interactions, providing a predictive framework for high-energy inelastic nuclear recoils.

In this scheme, electroweak symmetry breaking induces a neutral-state splitting, δ, and an off-diagonal Z interaction. For a series of coupled multiplets (such as 3M2D, 5M4D, etc.), both the splitting and the leading inelastic interaction are universal for a fixed (mχ, y), independent of the electroweak representation. The high recoil energy observed by LZ points to splittings of a few hundred keV. The fixed Z-mediated rate allows for the determination of a mass-dependent δLZ(mχ) by requiring one expected inelastic event in the LZ exposure, with a two-sided 90% Poisson band.

This defines a universal region in the (mχ, y) plane. Intersecting this region with the representation-dependent thermal relic trajectories selects a benchmark for each multiplet. The corresponding electroweak representation then predicts a correlated loop-induced elastic spin-independent signal at lower recoil energies, which could be sought in future experiments.