We study the projected sensitivities of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) to cosmic-ray-produced dark mesons in a confining dark sector with a leptophobic vector portal. Using the same atmospheric dark meson flux framework as in our previous JUNO study, which includes proton bremsstrahlung, Standard Model meson decays, and Drell–Yan production followed by dark hadronization described by a modified Quark Combination Model, we perform a controlled comparison between JUNO and DUNE within a common source-side setup. Our results indicate that JUNO achieves stronger overall sensitivity across most of the parameter space, primarily because its inclusive event-level visible-energy criterion efficiently retains soft elastic recoils. In contrast, DUNE demonstrates systematically larger visible effective cross sections in the deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) channel, where energetic final states readily exceed its particle-level hadronic thresholds. Moreover, kinematic hardening of elastic recoils at heavier mediator masses (mZ′≳1 GeV) and higher incident energies (EKD≳1 GeV) further enhances DUNE’s elastic acceptance. Nevertheless, over most of the benchmark parameter space considered here, JUNO yields a larger total signal rate because the incident dark meson flux peaks sharply at low energies, favoring the soft elastic regime. Consequently, this interplay between flux distribution and detector thresholds causes the sensitivity gap between JUNO and DUNE to narrow significantly in the heavy-mediator regime.
Chen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.