Neutron Decay to a Non-Abelian Dark Sector

Abstract

According to the Standard Model (SM), we expect to find a proton for each decaying neutron. However, the experiments counting the number of decayed neutrons and produced protons have a disagreement. This discrepancy suggests that neutrons might have an exotic decay to a Dark Sector (DS). In this paper, we explore a scenario where neutrons decay to a dark Dirac fermion $\chi$ and a non-abelian dark gauge boson $W^{\prime }$. We discuss the cosmological implications of this scenario assuming DS particles are produced via freeze-in. In our proposed scenario, DS has three portals with the SM sector: (1) the fermion portal coming from the mixing of the neutron with $\chi$, (2) a scalar portal, and (3) a non-renormalizable kinetic mixing between photon and dark gauge bosons which induces a vector portal between the two sectors. We show that neither the fermion portal nor the scalar portal should contribute to the production of the particles in the early universe. Specifically, we argue that the maximum temperature of the universe must be low enough to prevent the production of $\chi$ in the early universe. In this paper, we rely on the vector portal to connect the two sectors, and we discuss the phenomenological bounds on the model. The main constraints come from ensuring the right relic abundance of dark matter and evading the neutron star bounds. When dark gauge boson is very light, measurements of the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis impose a stringent constraint as well.

arXiv comment20 pages, 6 figures

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• The Strange Physics of Dark Baryons