Hylogenesis: A Unified Origin for Baryonic Visible Matter and Antibaryonic Dark Matter

Abstract

We present a novel mechanism for generating both the baryon and dark matter densities of the Universe. A new Dirac fermion X carrying a conserved baryon number charge couples to the Standard Model quarks as well as a GeV-scale hidden sector. CP-violating decays of X, produced non-thermally in low-temperature reheating, sequester antibaryon number in the hidden sector, thereby leaving a baryon excess in the visible sector. The antibaryonic hidden states are stable dark matter. A spectacular signature of this mechanism is the baryon-destroying inelastic scattering of dark matter that can annihilate baryons at appreciable rates relevant for nucleon decay searches.

Footnote 1 restored after omission in v2; no other corrections