Glueball Dark Matter Revisited.

Area of Science:

• * Cosmology
• * Particle Physics
• * Quantum Field Theory

Background:

• * The composition of dark matter remains a significant mystery in modern physics.
• * Scalar glueballs, predicted by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD)-like theories, are a potential dark matter candidate.
• * Previous studies on glueball dark matter often employed simplified models lacking strong-coupling dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

• * To investigate the possibility of dark matter being composed of stable scalar glueballs within a confining dark SU(3) gauge theory.
• * To calculate the relic abundance of these dark glueballs for the first time using a thermal effective theory that incorporates strong-coupling dynamics.
• * To provide a more accurate prediction for the glueball relic abundance by utilizing lattice simulation data.

Main Methods:

• * Development of a thermal effective theory to describe the dynamics of scalar glueballs.
• * Incorporation of strong-coupling dynamics relevant to confining gauge theories.
• * Fitting an effective potential for glueballs using data from lattice simulations.
• * Calculation of the relic abundance based on the fitted potential and cosmological parameters.

Main Results:

• * A novel prediction for the relic abundance of dark glueballs is derived: 0.12ζ_{T}^{-3}Λ/(137.9 ext{ eV})≲Ωh^{2}≲0.12ζ_{T}^{-3}Λ/(82.7 ext{ eV}).
• * The predicted relic abundance is found to be approximately an order of magnitude smaller than previously reported values in the literature.
• * The uncertainty in the prediction is primarily attributed to the fitting of lattice simulation data.

Conclusions:

• * Stable scalar glueballs from a confining dark SU(3) gauge theory are a viable dark matter candidate with a potentially lower relic abundance than previously thought.
• * The developed theoretical framework, accounting for strong-coupling dynamics, offers a more consistent approach to exploring strongly coupled dark sectors.
• * The methodology can be extended to explore dark matter implications for different gauge groups and cosmological histories.