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  • Letter
  • Open Access

No room for minimal monopole dark matter

Felix Brümmer1, Giacomo Ferrante1,2,*, Théodore Fischer1,3, and Michele Frigerio3,4

  • *Contact author: giacomo.ferrante@ulb.be
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Phys. Rev. D 113, L091701 – Published 11 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bttg-zfr3

Abstract

The magnetic monopole of a dark sector has been advocated as an appealing dark matter candidate. We revisit the computation of the monopole abundance ΩM, generated by a thermal phase transition in the minimal ’t Hooft-Polyakov model. We explore the three regimes where the phase transition is second order, weakly first order, or supercooled, identifying the parameter space regions where ΩM can match the observed dark matter abundance. However, the dark sector necessarily contains a stable electrically charged particle, namely a massive vector boson, with a calculable abundance ΩW′. We show that, under minimal assumptions, ΩW′ is always far larger than ΩM: dark monopoles cannot constitute a sizeable fraction of dark matter.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, L091701– Published 11 May, 2026
  • Received 27 October 2025
  • Accepted 7 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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