2018/05/11 by Moira I. Gresham, Hou Keong Lou, Kathryn M. Zurek · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Physics #Scientific Research and Discoveries #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.98.096001
published as Phys. Rev. D 98, 096001 (2018) · 37 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2018/05/11 · openalex publication_date 2018/11/05 · arxiv updated 2018/11/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Nuggets---very large stable bound objects arising in the presence of a sufficiently attractive and long-range force and in the absence of a dark Coulomb force---are a smoking gun signature for asymmetric dark matter (ADM). The cosmology of ADM nuggets is both generic and unique: nuggets feature highly exothermic fusion processes, which can impact the shape of the core in galaxies, as well as give rise to rare dark star formation. We find, considering the properties of nuggets in a generic extended nuclear model with both attractive and repulsive forces, that self-interaction constraints place an upper bound on nugget masses at the freeze-out of synthesis in the ballpark of Mfo\ensuremath\lesssim1016 GeV. We also show that indirect detection strongly constrains models where the scalar mediator binding the nuggets mixes with the Higgs.