Six flavor quark matter
Abstract
Macroscopic nuggets of quark matter were proposed several decades ago as a candidate for dark matter. The formation of these objects in the early universe requires the QCD phase transition to be first order — a requirement that is not satisfied in the Standard Model where lattice simulations reveal a continuous crossover instead. In this article we point out that new physics may supercool the electroweak phase transition to below the QCD scale, and the QCD phase transition with six massless quarks becomes first-order. As a result, the quark nuggets composed of six-flavor quark matter (6FQM) may survive as a viable dark matter candidate. The size of a 6FQM nugget is estimated to be around 1010 grams in mass and 10-2 cm in radius. The calculated relic abundance of 6FQM nuggets is comparable to the observed dark matter energy density; therefore, this scenario provides a compelling explanation for the coincident energy densities of dark and baryonic matter. We have explored various potential signatures — including a gravitational wave background, gravitational lensing, and transient photon emission from collisions with compact stars and other nuggets — and demonstrated that the favored region of parameter space is still allowed by current constraints whilemore »
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States). Dept. of Physics
- Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1512409
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0017647; PHY-1125897
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 2018; Journal Issue: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479
- Publisher:
- Springer Berlin
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; cosmology of theories beyond the SM; confinement; Higgs physics; phase diagram of QCD
Citation Formats
Bai, Yang, and Long, Andrew J. Six flavor quark matter. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1007/jhep06(2018)072.
Bai, Yang, & Long, Andrew J. Six flavor quark matter. United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep06(2018)072
Bai, Yang, and Long, Andrew J. Thu .
"Six flavor quark matter". United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep06(2018)072. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1512409.
@article{osti_1512409,
title = {Six flavor quark matter},
author = {Bai, Yang and Long, Andrew J.},
abstractNote = {Macroscopic nuggets of quark matter were proposed several decades ago as a candidate for dark matter. The formation of these objects in the early universe requires the QCD phase transition to be first order — a requirement that is not satisfied in the Standard Model where lattice simulations reveal a continuous crossover instead. In this article we point out that new physics may supercool the electroweak phase transition to below the QCD scale, and the QCD phase transition with six massless quarks becomes first-order. As a result, the quark nuggets composed of six-flavor quark matter (6FQM) may survive as a viable dark matter candidate. The size of a 6FQM nugget is estimated to be around 1010 grams in mass and 10-2 cm in radius. The calculated relic abundance of 6FQM nuggets is comparable to the observed dark matter energy density; therefore, this scenario provides a compelling explanation for the coincident energy densities of dark and baryonic matter. We have explored various potential signatures — including a gravitational wave background, gravitational lensing, and transient photon emission from collisions with compact stars and other nuggets — and demonstrated that the favored region of parameter space is still allowed by current constraints while discovery of 6FQM nugget dark matter may require new experimental probes.},
doi = {10.1007/jhep06(2018)072},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)},
number = 6,
volume = 2018,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Jun 14 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Thu Jun 14 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}
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Cited by: 22 works
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Figures / Tables:
Figure 1: The flavor content of 6FQM that we calculated in section 2 and of 3FQM that was worked out in ref. [40]. The charge densities, denoted by $n_f$, equal the number density of particles $f$ minus the density of CP-conjugate antiparticles $\bar{f}$. For quark densities, there is an implicitmore »
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