# Cosmological Production of Dark Nuclei

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation of dark matter nuclei in models with a new confining gauge force, using effective field theory to compute formation processes and implications for dark matter composition and detection.

## Contribution

It introduces a first-principles calculation of dark nucleosynthesis, extending effective theory methods to dark matter models with baryonic constituents.

## Key findings

- Dark deuterium can form significantly in TeV-scale baryonic dark matter models.
- Dark nucleosynthesis can produce monochromatic photon lines for indirect detection.
- Models with singlets require a dark photon to undergo nucleosynthesis.

## Abstract

We study the formation of Dark Matter nuclei in scenarios where DM particles are baryons of a new confining gauge force. The dark nucleosynthesis is analogous to the formation of light elements in the SM and requires as a first step the formation of dark deuterium. We compute this process from first principles, using the formalism of pion-less effective theory for nucleon-nucleon interactions. This controlled effective field theory expansion allows us to systematically compute the cross sections for generic SM representations under the assumption of shallow bound states. In the context of vector-like confinement models we find that, for nucleon masses in the TeV range, baryonic DM made of electro-weak constituents can form a significant fraction of dark deuterium and a much smaller fraction of dark tritium. Formation of dark nuclei can also lead to monochromatic photon lines in indirect detection. Models with singlets do not undergo nucleosynthesis unless a dark photon is added to the theory.