https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7288-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Direct search constraints on very heavy dark skyrmions
Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, University of Saskatchewan, 116 Science Place, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5E2, Canada
* e-mail: rainer.dick@usask.ca
Received:
8
July
2019
Accepted:
6
September
2019
Published online:
14
September
2019
In the standard dark matter creation scenario, dark matter arises from freeze-out due to decoupling from the thermal heat bath in the early universe. On the other hand, topological solitons can also emerge during phase transitions through the Kibble–Zurek mechanism or through bubble nucleation. In particular, Murayama and Shu found that the Kibble–Zurek mechanism can produce topological defects up to about 10 PeV, and Bramante et al. had recently pointed out that direct search constraints can be extrapolated to very large masses. Motivated by these observations, we examine direct search constraints for PeV scale dark skyrmions with a Higgs portal coupling to baryons. We find abundance constraints on the combination 
of Skyrme coupling 
and skyrmion mass 
. We also find that extrapolation of the direct search constraints from XENON1T to very high masses constrains the combination 
as a function of , where 
is the Higgs portal coupling of the dark skyrmions.
© The Author(s), 2019
