91 citations · 473 across the 18 of their papers we have counts for
18 papers
Late-time Quantum Vacuum Decay and its Cosmological Implications
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
The existence of a landscape of metastable vacua raises the possibility that our Universe may have undergone quantum vacuum decay at late times. This work explores how such a trans…
Gravitational Waves From Dark Binaries With Finite-Range Dark Forces
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
This paper calculates the stochastic gravitational wave background from dark binaries with finite-range attractive dark forces, complementing previous works which consider long-ran…
Origin and detection of nontopological soliton dark matter
Nicholas Orlofsky
Macroscopic dark matter like nontopological solitons can form either via the fusion and accumulation of free particles or during cosmological phase transitions. Both mechanisms can…
Gravitational Waves From More Attractive Dark Binaries
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) has led to a deeper understanding of binaries of ordinary astrophysical objects, including neutron stars and black holes. In this work, w…
Dark Exoplanets
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
The prevailing assumption is that all exoplanets are made of ordinary matter. However, we propose an unconventional possibility that some exoplanets could be made of dark matter, w…
Origin of nontopological soliton dark matter: solitosynthesis or phase transition
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
This work demonstrates that nontopological solitons with large global charges and masses, even above the Planck scale, can form in the early universe and dominate the dark matter a…
Q-Monopole-Ball: A Topological and Nontopological Soliton
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
Magnetic monopoles and Q-balls are examples of topological and nontopological solitons, respectively. A new soliton state with both topological and nontopological charges is shown…
Catalyzed Baryogenesis
Yang Bai, Joshua Berger, Mrunal Korwar +1
A novel mechanism, "catalyzed baryogenesis," is proposed to explain the observed baryon asymmetry in our universe. In this mechanism, the motion of a ball-like catalyst provides th…
Neutrino As The Dark Force
Nicholas Orlofsky, Yue Zhang
We point out a novel role for the Standard Model neutrino in dark matter phenomenology where the exchange of neutrinos generates a long-range potential between dark matter particle…
Searching for Magnetic Monopoles with the Earth's Magnetic Field
Yang Bai, Sida Lu, Nicholas Orlofsky
Magnetic monopoles have long been predicted in theory and could exist as a stable object in our universe. As they move around in galaxies, magnetic monopoles could be captured by a…
Phenomenology of Magnetic Black Holes with Electroweak-Symmetric Coronas
Yang Bai, Joshua Berger, Mrunal Korwar +1
Magnetically charged black holes (MBHs) are interesting solutions of the Standard Model and general relativity. They may possess a "hairy" electroweak-symmetric corona outside the…
Electroweak-Symmetric Dark Monopoles from Preheating
Yang Bai, Mrunal Korwar, Nicholas Orlofsky
If the dark sector contains 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles and a small enough dark gauge coupling, dark monopoles could be a macroscopic dark matter candidate. Its Higgs-portal coupli…
Primordial Extremal Black Holes as Dark Matter
Yang Bai, Nicholas Orlofsky
We show that primordial (nearly) extremal black holes with a wide range of masses from the Planck scale to around g could be cosmologically stable and explain dark matter, g…
Microlensing of X-ray Pulsars: a Method to Detect Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter
Yang Bai, Nicholas Orlofsky
Primordial black holes (PBHs) with a mass from to may comprise 100% of dark matter. Due to a combination of wave and finite source size effects, the…
Inflationary theory and pulsar timing investigations of primordial black holes and gravitational waves
Nicholas Orlofsky, Aaron Pierce, James D. Wells
The gravitational waves measured at LIGO are presumed here to come from merging primordial black holes. We ask how these primordial black holes could arise through inflationary mod…
boson mediated dark matter beyond the effective theory
John Kearney, Nicholas Orlofsky, Aaron Pierce
Direct detection bounds are beginning to constrain a very simple model of weakly interacting dark matter---a Majorana fermion with a coupling to the boson. In a particularly st…
High-Scale Axions without Isocurvature from Inflationary Dynamics
John Kearney, Nicholas Orlofsky, Aaron Pierce
Observable primordial tensor modes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would point to a high scale of inflation . If the scale of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) breaking is gr…
Vectorlike Leptons as the Tip of the Dark Matter Iceberg
James Halverson, Nicholas Orlofsky, Aaron Pierce
A vectorlike lepton could make up a tiny fraction of the dark matter. Its large Z-boson mediated direct detection cross section can compensate for the small relic abundance, giving…