Paper: astro-ph/0512454
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 01:36:55 GMT (9kb)

Title: Dark matter from encapsulated atoms

Authors: C.D. Froggatt and H.B. Nielsen

Comments: 11 pages, paper based on talks by CDF and HBN at the 8th Workshop on
What comes beyond the Standard Models, Bled and by CDF at Coslab 2005,
Smolenice
\\
We propose that dark matter consists of collections of atoms encapsulated
inside pieces of an alternative vacuum, in which the Higgs field vacuum
expectation value is appreciably smaller than in the usual vacuum. The
alternative vacuum is supposed to have the same energy density as our own.
Apart from this degeneracy of vacuum phases, we do not introduce any new
physics beyond the Standard Model. The dark matter balls are estimated to have
a radius of order 20 cm and a mass of order $10^{11}$ kg. However they are very
difficult to observe directly, but inside dense stars may expand eating up the
star and cause huge explosions (gamma ray bursts). The ratio of dark matter to
ordinary baryonic matter is estimated to be of the order of the ratio of the
binding energy per nucleon in helium to the difference between the binding
energies per nucleon in heavy nuclei and in helium. Thus we predict
approximately five times as much dark matter as ordinary baryonic matter!

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512454 , 9kb)