{
  "abstract": "We study the formation of $\\mathcal{N}$-quark baryons during the confinement crossover of an $SU(\\mathcal{N})$ gauge theory containing quarks in the fundamental representation, with masses around or below the confinement scale. We assume stepwise baryon formation through the successive fusion of pairs of quark-clusters, with color interaction rates obeying quadratic Casimir scaling. We include the complete set of reactions between $SU(\\mathcal{N})$ antisymmetric clusters dressed with their specific spin-flavor multiplicities. We show that at large $\\mathcal{N}$, baryon formation is hindered by a Casimir bottleneck, such that fusion of few-quark clusters in the initial steps of the baryon assembly chain is strongly outweighed by cluster destruction processes. We find that for $\\mathcal{N}=12\\,(18)$ the baryon-to-meson yield ratio is suppressed down to $10^{-12}\\,(10^{-23})$ of its value at $\\mathcal{N}=3$. We embed the mechanism in a vectorlike three-flavor model whose lightest baryon can be electrically neutral, while axial-anomaly-induced couplings and dimension-six operators induce decays of the unstable mesons and charged baryons safely before big-bang nucleosynthesis. The relic density of cosmologically stable neutral $\\mathcal{N}$-baryons is thus set during confinement at values so small that, for sufficiently large $\\mathcal{N}$, the baryon masses required to saturate the dark matter energy density exceed by several orders of magnitude the unitarity bound on annihilation cross sections.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.02464",
  "author_total": 3,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Luca Di Luzio"
    },
    {
      "name": "Samuele Di Valeriano"
    },
    {
      "name": "Enrico Nardi"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/82gcq7vxqsaep.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.02464",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "82gcq7vxqsaep",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.02464",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "hep-ph"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "hep-th"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3106|Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220473990",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.02464",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-01",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/82gcq7vxqsaep.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:26:45Z",
      "native_id": "2610.02464",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.02464"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:hep-ph",
      "subfield": "high-energy"
    }
  ],
  "title": "$SU(\\mathcal{N})$ baryon formation in the early Universe and dark matter",
  "title_text": "SU(𝒩) baryon formation in the early Universe and dark matter",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:26:45Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/82gcq7vxqsaep",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}