We revisit the possibility that dark matter is composed of stable scalar glueballs of a confining dark SU(3) gauge theory coupled only to gravity. The relic abundance of dark glueballs is studied for the first time in a thermal effective theory accounting for strong-coupling dynamics. An important ingredient of our analysis is the use of an effective potential for glueballs that is fitted by lattice simulations. We predict the relic abundance to be in the range $0.12{\zeta }_T^{-3}\mathrm{\Lambda }/(137.9\mathrm{eV})\lesssim \mathrm{\Omega }{h}^2\lesssim 0.12{\zeta }_T^{-3}\mathrm{\Lambda }/(82.7\mathrm{eV})$, with $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ being the confinement scale, ${\zeta }_T$ the visible-to-dark sector temperature ratio, and the uncertainty is coming from the fit to lattice data. This prediction is an order of magnitude smaller than the existing glueball abundance results in the literature. Our framework can be easily generalized to different gauge groups and modified cosmological histories paving the way toward consistent exploration of strongly coupled dark sectors and their cosmological implications.

• Received 7 August 2022
• Revised 1 November 2022
• Accepted 7 December 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.261302

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Published by the American Physical Society