by Ingrid Fadelli
The first order phase transition is demonstrated in a symbolic way. The lower energy state is nucleating at random points. They will expand if they are larger than a critical size. The dark quarks are squeezed in pockets of the higher energy phase when the bubble walls expand. The quarks can't enter the neutral energy phase because they have color charge. They are forced to destroy from dark baryons. Three quark states have a zero net color charge. The dark matter of the universe is made up of dark baryons. Each contracting pocket has a small amount of baryons that survive, but only a small amount of baryons that have enough antiparticle counterparts in the pocket to destroy them. Credit: Asadi et al.
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Ohio state University recently carried out a study examining the possible effects of a first-order phase transition in a dark sector. In several scenarios, a transition could lead to a reduction in the amount of dark matter. The results of their analyses were published.
Juri Smirnov, one of the researchers who carried out the study, said that the work builds upon a body of literature that is investigating the transitions in the early universe. The dynamics of the non-abelian theories were not understood when Witten wrote his paper, but they are now.
Witten's paper does not apply the strong force described in the model to a dark matter sector that only contains heavy quarks. The effects of phase transitions were neglected in previous studies, which led to incorrect conclusions.
Smirnov and his colleagues carried out a new study that looked at the effects of a first-order phase transition in a dark sector. Simulation tools that were previously unavailable enabled their work.
Data from simulations of gluonic theories can be used to understand what would happen in a system. We were able to describe how bubbles of the confined phase nucleate and expand, taking over the entire space, using input quantities of heat released per unit volume and bubble wall surface tension.
A dark baryon is a dark sector particle. It is similar to the standard neutron model and has three types of dark quark in it. An analogy can be made to the known phenomenon, that the three colors become white, if they are named after it. This construction has an attractive feature that is very similar to the way the protons is long lived in the standard model, a dark matter state is protected from decay by this charge assignment. If we want to describe a new type of matter that is stable on time scales, this is a desirable feature. Credit: Asadi et al.
Smirnov and his colleagues were able to show that a reduction in the abundance of dark matter is unavoidable in a broad class of scenarios, specifically where dark matter is long-lived due to a conserved quantity. This would lead to larger dark matter mass than previously predicted.
"Our findings suggest that we might need to rethink our search strategies for heavy particles," Smirnov said. The exact type of dark matter and visible matter interaction is dependent on the details of the theory.
The mechanism unveiled by the researchers is applicable to different scenarios that are related to the one they examined. It could be applied to instances where dark objects can form. This possibility was explored in a paper by a team of researchers at the University of Pisa.
The research could be used to explore phase transitions in heavy quark dark sectors and other scenarios. The researchers plan to explore how the interaction between dark barons and known particles might look like in the future. The way towards the development of alternative strategies to search for dark matter could be helped by the results of these works.
Our work allows us to ask what if dark matter doesn't interact weakly with our world, but just rarely. Smirnov said something. If dark matter particles are heavy, it would be hard to find them, even if their interaction with our matter was significant. This question can lead to different search strategies, such as surface or space based dark matter detectors, instead of underground searches, as sufficiently strongly interacting particles would not reach underground detectors at a large enough speed to cause a signal.
There is more information about Accidentally Asymmetric Dark Matter. There is a book titled "PhysRevLett. 127.211101."
Edward Witten wrote about Cosmic separation of phases. There is a DOI titled "10103/PhysRevD.30.272".
Dark matter is a weakly coupled dark baryon. The book is titled "JHEP10( 2017)"
The Journal of High Energy Physics looked at Dark Matter as dark dwarfs and other objects. The book is titled "JHEP09(2021)033033."
Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D are in the journal.
The Science X Network will be launched in 2021.
The study explores phase transitions in a dark sector using simulations.
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