Dark baryon black holes

Journal Article · 08 May 2025 · Physical Review. D.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.095010 · OSTI ID:2565448

Profumo, Stefano

We explore a novel mechanism for dark matter production through the formation of light black holes from the collapse of dark baryons in confining SU(N) gauge theories in the large- $N$ limit. While glueballs and mesons cannot form black holes under physically reasonable conditions, we prove that for appropriate ranges of the confinement scale, quark masses, number of colors $N$ , and dark sector temperature, dark baryons can produce Planck-scale black hole relics in the early Universe. Assuming the relics are stable, the abundance of both the dark baryon black hole population directly arising at confinement and that frozen in from dark glueball and meson pair annihilation are exponentially suppressed in $N$ , leading to an upper limit $N\lesssim 100$ and of a few hundred Planck units in mass for models where the black hole relics are the entirety of the dark matter. We present a detailed numerical study of the parameter space where this scenario is realized. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0010107
• OSTI ID: 2565448
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D., Journal Name: Physical Review. D. Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 111; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 2470-0010
• Publisher: American Physical SocietyCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English