Quirks Live in Cool Universes

Abstract

We demonstrate that cosmological observations place strong bounds on the reheat temperature $T_\text{RH}$ of the Standard Model (SM) in minimal models of `quirks' -- heavy fermions transforming under the SM gauge group together with a new non-Abelian gauge interaction with a confinement scale far below the mass of the fermions. These models have unique collider signals associated with the confining flux strings, which cannot break due to the large mass of the quirks. Our work shows that in these models $T_\text{RH} \lesssim \mathcal{O}(100)$ GeV for the entire `quirky' parameter space where the effects of the flux string are important. These bounds are in tension with most models of baryogenesis, showing that the discovery of quirks at colliders can have far-reaching implications for cosmology. The bounds arise because the irreducible relic abundance of glueballs from UV freeze-in, combined with their long lifetimes, leads to constraints from the disruption of BBN, distortions of the CMB, excess $\gamma$-rays, an over-abundance of self-interacting dark matter, and contributions to $\Delta N_{\rm eff}$. The glueball freeze-in abundance has a strong dependence on $T_\text{RH}$, making the bounds relatively insensitive to strong interaction uncertainties. The bounds are robust to the SM quantum numbers of the quirks and the presence of Yukawa couplings with the Higgs. In non-minimal extensions of the model where the glueballs can decay to an additional dark sector, the bounds remain for models where the flux string has a macroscopic length at colliders. We also show that for quirk masses above $\sim 10$ TeV, the dark glueballs can be the dominant component of dark matter. This work illustrates a striking connection between quirky collider signals and cosmological probes of new physics, strengthening the case for targeted quirk searches at colliders.