  Direct detection experiments aim at the detection of dark matter in the form
of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) by searching for signals from
elastic dark matter nucleus scattering. Additionally, inelastic scattering in
which the nucleus is excited is expected from nuclear physics and provides an
additional detectable signal. In the context of a low-energy effective field
theory we investigate the experimental reach to these inelastic transitions for
xenon-based detectors employing a dual-phase time projection chamber. We find
that once a dark matter signal is established, inelastic transitions enhance
the discovery reach and we show that they allow a better determination of the
underlying particle physics.
