Glueball dark matter, precisely

TL;DR

This paper investigates the viability of stable scalar glueballs from a confining dark SU(N) gauge theory as dark matter candidates, using thermal effective theory and lattice data to predict relic abundance across various scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed thermal effective theory approach for predicting dark glueball relic abundance, considering strong-coupling dynamics and comparing with previous models.

Findings

Glueballs can account for all dark matter in many scenarios.

Relic abundance predictions are consistent with lattice simulations.

Viable phase transition scales range from 20 MeV to 10^10 GeV.

Abstract

We delve deeper into the potential composition of dark matter as stable scalar glueballs from a confining dark $SU(N)$ gauge theory, focusing on $N=\{3,4,5\}$. To predict the relic abundance of glueballs for the various gauge groups and scenarios of thermalization of the dark gluon gas, we employ a thermal effective theory that accounts for the strong-coupling dynamics in agreement with lattice simulations. We compare our methodology with previous works and discuss the possible sources of discrepancy. The results are encouraging and show that glueballs can account for the totality of dark matter in many unconstrained scenarios with a phase transition scale $20$ MeV$\lesssim\Lambda\lesssim10^{10}$ GeV, thus opening the possibility of exciting future studies.