Electroweak-symmetric dark monopoles from preheating

Abstract

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 coupling to the Standard Model can modify the electroweak vacuum in the monopole interior. In the most striking cases, dark monopoles could even contain electroweak-symmetric cores and generate multi-hit signals at large-volume detectors. If they are produced via parametric resonance in the early Universe, monopoles with radii up to one micron and masses up to ten kilotonnes could account for all of dark matter.