Accelerator probes for new stable quarks

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of accelerator experiments to detect new stable heavy quarks that could form part of dark matter, focusing on their production, signatures, and implications for dark matter models.

Contribution

It provides estimates of production cross sections for new stable heavy quarks at LHC and outlines experimental signatures for detecting such particles.

Findings

Estimated production cross sections at LHC for heavy stable quarks.

Outlined experimental signatures for detecting new stable quarks.

Discussed implications for dark matter searches and composite dark matter scenarios.

Abstract

The nonbaryonic dark matter of the Universe can consist of new stable double charged particles $O^{--}$, bound with primordial helium in heavy neutral O-helium (OHe)"atoms" by ordinary Coulomb interaction. O-helium dark atoms can play the role of specific nuclear interacting dark matter and provide solution for the puzzles of dark matter searches. The successful development of composite dark matter scenarios appeals to experimental search for the charged constituents of dark atoms. If $O^{--}$ is a "heavy quark cluster" $\bar U \bar U \bar U$, its production at accelerators is virtually impossible and the strategy of heavy quark search is reduced to search for heavy stable hadrons, containing only single heavy quark (or antiquark). Estimates of production cross section of such particles at LHC are presented and the experimental signatures for new stable quarks are outlined.