Heavy Dark Baryons as Self-Interacting Dark Matter: A GeV-Scale Coincidence
Abstract
We study self-interacting dark matter composed of heavy baryons in a confining dark SU(N) gauge theory with a single heavy vector-like quark, mQ ≫ Λd. In this regime, the dark baryons are compact Coulombic bound states whose long-distance interactions can be described by a multipole expansion. We derive the leading baryon-baryon interaction by adapting the quarkonium operator-product-expansion formalism to heavy baryons. The resulting force contains non-retarded London dispersion, retarded Casimir-Polder, and Yukawa contributions from dark glueball exchange. We find that the self-interaction phenomenology depends strongly on the number of colors. For N=2,3, the attractive interaction is too weak to overcome the short-distance Pauli repulsion, and no phenomenologically relevant velocity dependence is obtained within our minimal set-up. For sufficiently large N, the attractive interaction remains competitive with the repulsive core and can generate strong velocity dependent cross sections. Taking SU(10) as a representative finite-N realization, we find regions compatible with self-interaction requirements inferred from dwarf galaxies and clusters, while allowing much larger cross sections at low velocities relevant for gravothermal evolution. These regions correspond to GeV-scale dark baryons and a confinement scale close to that of QCD, which naturally motivate an asymmetric dark matter origin.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{garcia2026heavy,
title = {{Heavy Dark Baryons as Self-Interacting Dark Matter: A GeV-Scale Coincidence}},
author = {Giovani Dalla Valle Garcia and Juan Herrero-Garc\'ıa},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.39193},
eprint = {2609.39193},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39193},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Heavy Dark Baryons as Self-Interacting Dark Matter: A GeV-Scale Coincidence
AU - Giovani Dalla Valle Garcia
AU - Juan Herrero-Garc\'ıa
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.39193
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39193
AB - We study self-interacting dark matter composed of heavy baryons in a confining dark SU(N) gauge theory with a single heavy vector-like quark, m_Q ≫ Λ_d. In this regime, the dark baryons are compact Coulombic bound states whose long-distance interactions can be described by a multipole expansion. We derive the leading baryon-baryon interaction by adapting the quarkonium operator-product-expansion formalism to heavy baryons. The resulting force contains non-retarded London dispersion, retarded Casimir-Polder, and Yukawa contributions from dark glueball exchange. We find that the self-interaction phenomenology depends strongly on the number of colors. For N=2,3, the attractive interaction is too weak to overcome the short-distance Pauli repulsion, and no phenomenologically relevant velocity dependence is obtained within our minimal set-up. For sufficiently large N, the attractive interaction remains competitive with the repulsive core and can generate strong velocity dependent cross sections. Taking SU(10) as a representative finite-N realization, we find regions compatible with self-interaction requirements inferred from dwarf galaxies and clusters, while allowing much larger cross sections at low velocities relevant for gravothermal evolution. These regions correspond to GeV-scale dark baryons and a confinement scale close to that of QCD, which naturally motivate an asymmetric dark matter origin.
ER -