English

Making the Universe at 20 MeV

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2021-02-12 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

We present a testable mechanism of low-scale baryogenesis and dark matter production in which neither baryon nor lepton number are violated. Charged DD mesons are produced out-of-equilibrium at tens of MeV temperatures. The DD mesons quickly undergo CP-violating decays to charged pions, which then decay into dark-sector leptons without violating lepton number. To transfer this lepton asymmetry to the baryon asymmetry, the dark leptons scatter on additional dark-sector states charged under lepton and baryon number. Amusingly, this transfer proceeds without electroweak sphalerons, which are no longer active at such low scales. We present two example models which can achieve this transfer while remaining consistent with current limits. The required amount of CP violation in charged DD meson decays, while currently allowed, will be probed by colliders. Additionally, the relevant decays of charged pions to dark-sector leptons have been constrained by the PIENU and PSI experiments and will be further explored in upcoming experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.06115,
  title  = {Making the Universe at 20 MeV},
  author = {Gilly Elor and Robert McGehee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.06115},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

10+5 pages, 3 figures; v2: corrected PIENU bound (no change to results); v3: published in PRD with minor revisions (no change to results)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:06:50.784Z