scholarly journals String fragmentation in supercooled confinement and implications for dark matter

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iason Baldes ◽  
Yann Gouttenoire ◽  
Filippo Sala

Abstract A strongly-coupled sector can feature a supercooled confinement transition in the early universe. We point out that, when fundamental quanta of the strong sector are swept into expanding bubbles of the confined phase, the distance between them is large compared to the confinement scale. We suggest a modelling of the subsequent dynamics and find that the flux linking the fundamental quanta deforms and stretches towards the wall, producing an enhanced number of composite states upon string fragmentation. The composite states are highly boosted in the plasma frame, which leads to additional particle production through the subsequent deep inelastic scattering. We study the consequences for the abundance and energetics of particles in the universe and for bubble-wall Lorentz factors. This opens several new avenues of investigation, which we begin to explore here, showing that the composite dark matter relic density is affected by many orders of magnitude.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Calibbi ◽  
Francesco D’Eramo ◽  
Sam Junius ◽  
Laura Lopez-Honorez ◽  
Alberto Mariotti

Abstract Displaced vertices at colliders, arising from the production and decay of long-lived particles, probe dark matter candidates produced via freeze-in. If one assumes a standard cosmological history, these decays happen inside the detector only if the dark matter is very light because of the relic density constraint. Here, we argue how displaced events could very well point to freeze-in within a non-standard early universe history. Focusing on the cosmology of inflationary reheating, we explore the interplay between the reheating temperature and collider signatures for minimal freeze-in scenarios. Observing displaced events at the LHC would allow to set an upper bound on the reheating temperature and, in general, to gather indirect information on the early history of the universe.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (29) ◽  
pp. 1850181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saleh Hamdan ◽  
James Unwin

We highlight the general scenario of dark matter freeze-out while the energy density of the universe is dominated by a decoupled non-relativistic species. Decoupling during matter domination changes the freeze-out dynamics, since the Hubble rate is parametrically different for matter and radiation domination. Furthermore, for successful Big Bang Nucleosynthesis the state dominating the early universe energy density must decay, this dilutes (or repopulates) the dark matter. As a result, the masses and couplings required to reproduce the observed dark matter relic density can differ significantly from radiation-dominated freeze-out.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Hryczuk ◽  
Maxim Laletin

Abstract We study a novel dark matter production mechanism based on the freeze-in through semi-production, i.e. the inverse semi-annihilation processes. A peculiar feature of this scenario is that the production rate is suppressed by a small initial abundance of dark matter and consequently creating the observed abundance requires much larger coupling values than for the usual freeze-in. We provide a concrete example model exhibiting such production mechanism and study it in detail, extending the standard formalism to include the evolution of dark matter temperature alongside its number density and discuss the importance of this improved treatment. Finally, we confront the relic density constraint with the limits and prospects for the dark matter indirect detection searches. We show that, even if it was never in full thermal equilibrium in the early Universe, dark matter could, nevertheless, have strong enough present-day annihilation cross section to lead to observable signals.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Harz ◽  
Bjorn Herrmann ◽  
Michael Klasen ◽  
Karol Kovarik ◽  
P. Steppeler

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-72
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee

Most of the matter in the universe exists in an unknown form called dark matter. All estimates of the mass of galaxies and galaxy clusters suggest they contain far more matter than is visible to us in the form of stars. Conventional explanations, such as the existence of large quantities of burnt-out stars known as MACHOs or dark gas clouds, have been ruled out. The most popular explanation is that dark matter consists of vast quantities of hypothetical stable particles known as WIMPs that were produced in vast quantities in the very early universe. Many laboratories around the world are searching for signs of these particles. These include the Italian Gran Sasso laboratory running the XENON100 experiment. Some theorists have suggested the evidence for dark matter would disappear if we had a better theory of gravity. Analysis of the Bullet Cluster indicates such proposals will not work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Abdul L. Bhuiyan

<p class="1Body">At the end of the period of contraction of the universe, all objects transform into gravity particles such as photons and electron- positron pairs which exist in virtual state in spacetime at an extremely high temperature. These particles move with extremely high speed comparable to the speed of light. As the early universe starts cooling, the speed of the particles starts to decrease when photons and electron- positron pairs move out of spacetime and appear as real particles. As the temperature continues to fall due to cooling, the electron- positron pairs start forming quarks (u and d) while simultaneously the energy of photons transform into dark matter. The u quarks and d quarks then continue to form nuclei of different elements including radio elements. Simultaneously, the lighter elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, etc. form the precursors to DNAs and RNAs of living organisms.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (08) ◽  
pp. 1950065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tahani R. Makki ◽  
Mounib F. El Eid ◽  
Grant J. Mathews

The light elements and their isotopes were produced during standard big bang nucleosynthesis (SBBN) during the first minutes after the creation of the universe. Comparing the calculated abundances of these light species with observed abundances, it appears that all species match very well except for lithium (7Li) which is overproduced by the SBBN. This discrepancy is rather challenging for several reasons to be considered on astrophysical and on nuclear physics ground, or by invoking nonstandard assumptions which are the focus of this paper. In particular, we consider a variation of the chemical potentials of the neutrinos and their temperature. In addition, we investigated the effect of dark matter on 7Li production. We argue that including nonstandard assumptions can lead to a significant reduction of the 7Li abundance compared to that of SBBN. This aspect of lithium production in the early universe may help to resolve the outstanding cosmological lithium problem.


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