Abstract
Nuggets---very large stable bound objects arising in the presence of a sufficiently attractive and long-range force and in the absence of a dark Coulomb force---are a smoking gun signature for Asymmetric Dark Matter (ADM). The cosmology of ADM nuggets is both generic and unique: nuggets feature highly exothermic fusion processes, which can impact the shape of the core in galaxies, as well as give rise to rare dark star formation. We find, considering the properties of nuggets in a generic extended nuclear model with both attractive and repulsive forces, that self-interaction constraints place an upper bound on nugget masses at the freeze-out of synthesis in the ballpark of $M_{\rm fo} \lesssim 10^{16}$ GeV. We also show that indirect detection strongly constrains models where the scalar mediator binding the nuggets mixes with the Higgs.
Highlights
Asymmetric dark matter (ADM) [1,2,3] with an attractive force may give rise to bound states, called nuggets [4,5]
Large bound states, characterized typically by N > 104 constituents, are interesting to consider as a DM candidate because their observational signatures—from early Universe cosmology, to impacts on the formation of DM halos, to direct and indirect detection—are quite distinct from other DM candidates that have been widely studied: (i) As we argue in Sec
We have studied the cosmology of asymmetric dark matter (ADM) nuggets, and found several unique and generic signatures
Summary
Asymmetric dark matter (ADM) [1,2,3] with an attractive force may give rise to bound states, called nuggets [4,5]. Models with DM coupled only through a light scalar mediator contain the minimal matter content necessary to assemble large ADM bound states; the light mediator is solely responsible for binding both the large and small nuggets, and for allowing the first step of synthesis to proceed kinematically—the analog of deuterium formation, which proceeds through photon emission. This minimal model is fairly predictive and restrictive. We discuss how nugget synthesis changes in the presence of a bottleneck similar to the 8Be bottleneck in the SM
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