GALPs! Composite heavy axion-like Dark Matter

Abstract: We propose a novel class of Dark Matter (DM) candidates in the form of a heavy composite Axion-Like Particle (ALP) with highly suppressed electromagnetic interactions, being stable even for masses exceeding the GeV scale. We argue that such a composite ALP emerges as a bound state -- the dark glueball -- due to confinement in a pure Yang-Mills dark sector. In a minimal ultraviolet complete QCD-like model, cosmological production of dark gluons as well as photons occurs via heavy fermion annihilation which effectively reheats both the dark and visible sectors setting up their temperature scales. Furthermore, effective interactions between glueballs and photons, resembling those of standard ALPs, are radiatively generated by heavy fermion loops. Consequently, DM glueballs interacting with photons are dubbed `Glueball ALPs' (GALPs). We uncover novel phenomenology of GALPs focusing on their unique astrophysical and cosmological signatures.