Conversion-Driven Baryogenesis in Flavored Dark Matter Models
arXiv:2607.11147
The paper studies how dark matter and the baryon asymmetry can be generated together via conversion-driven freeze-out in flavored dark matter models, extending the mechanism to quark‑philic scenarios and exploring the resulting long‑lived particle signatures at the LHC.
Abstract
The dark matter and baryon asymmetry problems remain two of the most pressing questions in fundamental physics. Considering lepton-flavored dark matter, it has recently been shown that the cogenesis of dark matter and the baryon asymmetry can be economically achieved via conversion-driven freeze-out. This mechanism leverages semi-efficient conversions to drive a departure from equilibrium while preserving independence from initial conditions through early thermalization of the dark sector. In this work, we develop this mechanism further, providing a detailed analysis of the chemical-equilibrium conditions and demonstrating that the framework can be extended to quark-philic scenarios, where the matter-antimatter asymmetry is generated resonantly through baryon-number-conserving -violating conversions of a mediator field into Standard Model quarks and dark matter. The strong QCD interactions of the colored mediator, including bound-state formation effects during freeze-out, substantially enlarge the viable parameter space and allow dark matter masses from a few hundred GeV up to the TeV scale. We furthermore assess the impact of thermal effects by comparing a minimal treatment with a setup that approximately accounts for thermal masses and their kinematic consequences. The resulting scenario predicts striking long-lived particle signatures with soft displaced decay products that remain only partially explored at the LHC and motivate dedicated searches at the HL-LHC.
14 pages