We scrutinize the XENON1T electron recoil excess in the scalar-singlet-extended dark matter effective field theory. We confront it with various astrophysical and laboratory constraints both in a general setup and in the more specific, recently proposed, variant with leptophilic Z 2 -odd mediators. The latter also provide mass to the light leptons via suppressed Z 2 breaking, a structure that is well fitting with the nature of the observed excess and the discrete symmetry leads to nonstandard dark-matter interactions. We find that the excess can be explained by neutrino–electron interactions, linked with the neutrino and electron masses, while dark-matter–electron scattering does not lead to statistically significant improvement. We analyze the parameter space preferred by the anomaly and find severe constraints that can only be avoided in certain corners of parameter space. Potentially problematic bounds on electron couplings from big-bang nucleosynthesis can be circumvented via a late phase transition in the new scalar sector.
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