Glueball dark matter in non-standard cosmologies

Abstract

Hidden sector glueball dark matter is well motivated by string theory, compactifications of which often have extra gauge groups uncoupled to the visible sector. We study the dynamics of glueballs in theories with a period of late time primordial matter domination followed by a low final reheating temperature due to a gravitationally coupled modulus. Compared to scenarios with a high reheating temperature, the required relic abundance is possible with higher hidden sector confinement scales, and less extreme differences in the entropy densities of the hidden and visible sectors. Both of these can occur in string derived models, and relatively light moduli are helpful for obtaining viable phenomenology. We also study the effects of hidden sector gluinos. In some parts of parameter space these can be the dominant dark matter component, while in others their abundance is much smaller than that of glueballs. Finally, we show that heavy glueballs produced from energy in the hidden sector prior to matter domination can have the correct relic abundance if they are sufficiently long lived.