The Relic Abundance of Massive Colored Particles after a Late Hadronic Annihilation Stage
Abstract
Description
We discuss the relic abundance of massive long lived colored particles with mass of the order of 1 TeV. We first examine the case where the massive colored particles have the standard color only. Next we consider the "Quirk Model" suggested by M. Luty, in which the colored particles transform under an additional non-abelian gauge group with a scale much smaller than the particles' mass. In both cases, the relic abundance is reduced via a "late" hadronic annihilation stage. In the second case the relic Quirks bind to ordinary quarks forming fractional charged objects and also anomalous heavy isotopes, and the bounds on the relic abundance become extremely severe. The force between Quirks, however, has a new confining part that manifests via macroscopic strings and the resulting efficient "very late" annihilations reduce the relic abundance to acceptable levels. The prospects of creating and detecting such particles at LHC and the fate of the particles created are discussed.
28 pages, 2 figures
28 pages, 2 figures