A recent composite-dark-matter scenario assumes that the dominant fraction of dark matter consists of O-helium (OHe) dark atoms, in which a lepton-like doubly charged particle O is bound with a primordial helium nucleus. It liberates the physics of d
ark matter from unknown features of new physics, but it demands a deep understanding of the details of known nuclear and atomic physics, which are still unclear. Here, we consider in detail the physics of the binding of OHe to various nuclei of interest for direct dark matter searches. We show that standard quantum mechanics leads to bound states in the keV region, but does not seem to provide a simple mechanism that stabilizes them. The crucial role of a barrier in the OHe-nucleus potential is confirmed for such a stabilization.
I review the predictions of the total cross section for many models, and point out that some of them lead to the conclusion that the standard experimental analysis may lead to systematic errors much larger than expected.
It is very likely that hadronic scattering will enter a new regime at the LHC, as the black-disk limit is reached. This will lead to a severe change in the t dependence of the real part and of the slope of the elastic scattering amplitude, and in tur
n this may bias the measurement of the total cross section. We examine this issue, and suggest new strategies to test the reliability of the total cross section measurements.
In view of the recent diffractive dijet data from CDF run II, we critically re-evaluate the standard approach to the calculation of central production of dijets in quasi-elastic hadronic collisions. We find that the process is dominated by the non-pe
rturbative region, and that even perturbative ingredients, such as the Sudakov form factor, are not under theoretical control. Comparison with data allows us to fix some of the uncertainties. Although we focus on dijets, our arguments apply to other high-mass central systems, such as the Higgs boson.
The analytic properties of the eikonal and U-matrix unitarization schemes are examined. It is shown that the basic properties of these schemes are identical. Both can fill the full circle of unitarity, and both can lead to standard and non-standard a
symptotic relations for the ratio of the elastic cross section to the total cross section. The relation between the phases of the unitarized amplitudes in each scheme is examined, and it is shown that demanding equivalence of the two schemes leads to a bound on the phase in the U-matrix scheme.
The hard pomeron component needed to reproduce small-x data seems to be present in elastic scattering at moderate energy. If this is the case, it is likely that the total cross section at the LHC will be appreciably larger than previously expected.
