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Title: Dark quark nuggets

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D.

“Dark quark nuggets,” a lump of dark quark matter, can be produced in the early universe for a wide range of confining gauge theories and serve as a macroscopic dark matter candidate. The two necessary conditions, a nonzero dark baryon number asymmetry and a first-order phase transition, can easily be satisfied for many asymmetric dark matter models and QCD-like gauge theories with a few massless flavors. For confinement scales from 10 keV to 100 TeV, these dark quark nuggets with a huge dark baryon number have their masses vary from 1023 g to 10–7 g and their radii from 108 cm to 10–15 cm. Such macroscopic dark matter candidates can be searched for by a broad scope of experiments and even new detection strategies. Specifically, we have found that the gravitational microlensing experiments can probe heavier dark quark nuggets or smaller confinement scales around 10 keV; collision of dark quark nuggets can generate detectable and transient electromagnetic radiation signals; the stochastic gravitational wave signals from the first-order phase transition can be probed by the pulsar timing array observations and other space-based interferometry experiments; the approximately massless dark mesons can behave as dark radiation to be tested by the next-generation cosmic microwave background experiments; the free dark baryons, as a subcomponent of dark matter, can have direct detection signals for a sufficiently strong interaction strength with the visible sector.

Research Organization:
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0017647; SC0007859; AC02-07CH11359
OSTI ID:
1503927
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1488602; OSTI ID: 1646645
Report Number(s):
arXiv:1810.04360; FERMILAB-PUB-18-600-T; PRVDAQ; 055047
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D., Journal Name: Physical Review. D. Vol. 99 Journal Issue: 5; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 78 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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