Seeding baryonic dark matter

Abstract

It has been proposed that primordial quark pellets or PQPs --ultra-dense quark-matter mini- stars-- formed at $T\sim 1$ GeV maybe a good candidate accounting for the dark matter of the universe. If correct, dark matter would consist of very compact objects with a maximum mass of $10^{-2} \ M_\odot$ and radii of approximately 100 m, although smaller objects would be much more abundant and encompass the bulk of the dark matter content. Here we describe a viable formation mechanism based on the enhancement of the local baryon density when supra-horizon Peccei-Quinn domain walls formed at an earlier epoch sweep and accumulate quarks and gluons before entering the horizon. Assuming an efficient baryon concentration by contracting Peccei-Quinn domain walls, we derive the resulting primordial quark pellet mass spectrum, minimum mass and cosmological abundance The results confirm that PQPs potentially constitute a conservative, Standard-Model-based, and observationally viable solution to the dark-matter puzzle.