No room for monopole dark matter

2025/09/26 by Brümmer, Felix, Ferrante, Giacomo, Fischer, Théodore +1 · 2 citations
#Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.21924

Abstract

The magnetic monopole of a dark sector has been advocated as an appealing dark matter candidate. We revisit the computation of the monopole abundance Ω_M, generated by a thermal phase transition in the minimal 't Hooft-Polyakov model. We explore the three regimes where the phase transition is second order, weakly first order, or supercooled, identifying the parameter space regions where Ω_M can match the observed dark matter abundance. However, the dark sector necessarily contains a stable electrically-charged particle, namely a massive vector boson, with a calculable abundance Ω_W'. We show that, under minimal assumptions, Ω_W' is always far larger than Ω_M: dark monopoles cannot constitute a sizeable fraction of dark matter.

Citations

• Cosmological phase transitions: From perturbative particle physics to gravitational waves
• Gravitational Waves from Supercool Axions
• Topology of cosmic domains and strings

Cited by

• Dark Matter and Baryon Asymmetry from Monopole-Axion Interactions
• A non-inflationary solution to the monopole problem

Related

• Dwarf Galaxy Sized Monopoles as Dark Matter?
• Dark Monopoles, Bounds on Hidden Sectors, and Cosmological Implications
• Phase transitions, anomalous baryon number violation and electroweak multiplet dark matter
• Magnetic Monopoles: Theoretical Insights into the Cosmic Ray Conundrum
• On the magnetic monopole mass