Related papers: Quark Matter Induced Extensive Air Showers
I describe a dark matter candidate based in qcd physics in which the dark matter is composed of macroscopically large "nuggets" of quark and anti-quark matter. These objects may have a sufficiently massive low number density to avoid…
If the dark matter of our galaxy is composed of nuggets of quarks or antiquarks in a colour superconducting phase there will be a small but non-zero flux of these objects through the Earth's atmosphere. A nugget of quark matter will deposit…
The first interactions of photon-induced showers are of electromagnetic nature, and the transfer of energy to the hadron/muon channel is reduced with respect to the bulk of hadron-induced showers. This results in a lower number of secondary…
Current evidence for dark matter in the universe does not exclude heavy composite nuclear-density objects consisting of bound quarks or antiquarks over a significant range of masses. Here we analyze one such proposed scenario, which…
The Pierre Auger Observatory has been designed to investigate the most energetic particles known, the ultra high energy cosmic rays. The observatory, covering an area of 3000 km^2, combines two different detection techniques to study the…
Axion quark nuggets (AQNs) are hypothetical objects with nuclear density that would have formed during the quark-hadron transition and could make up most of the dark matter today. These objects have a mass greater than a few grams and are…
Quark nuggets are theoretical objects composed of approximately equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks and are also called strangelets and nuclearites. They have been proposed as a candidate for dark matter, which constitutes about…
Extensive air showers are the result of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic rays at ultra-high energy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the fine details of hadronic…
Within the quark nugget model, dark matter particles may be represented by compact composite objects composed of a large number of quarks or antiquarks. Due to strong interaction with visible matter, antiquark nuggets should manifest…
The Pierre Auger Observatory have reported [1-3] observation of several exotic cosmic ray -like events which apparently related to thunderstorms. These events are much larger in size than conventional cosmic ray events, and they have very…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) arrive at Earth from the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. They collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere with energies about ten times higher than any man-made accelerator,…
Astroparticles offer a new path for research in the field of particle physics, allowing investigations at energies above those accesible with accelerators. Ultra-high energy cosmic rays can be studied via the observation of the showers they…
One of the possible consequences of the existence of extra degrees of freedom beyond the electroweak scale is the increase of neutrino-nucleon cross sections ($\sigma_{\nu N}$) beyond Standard Model predictions. At ultra-high energies this…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest detector of ultra--high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). It uses an array of fluorescence telescopes and particle detectors at the ground to obtain detailed measurements of the energy…
In order to examine a muon excess observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory, detailed Monte Carlo simulations were carried out for primary protons, iron nuclei and strangelets (hypothetical stable lumps of strange quark matter). We obtained…
The existence of extra degrees of freedom beyond the electroweak scale may allow the formation of black holes in nearly horizontal neutrino air showers. In this paper we examine the average properties of the light descendants of these black…
Anti-quark nuggets (AQNs) have been suggested to solve the dark matter (DM) and the missing antimatter problem in the universe and have been proposed as an explanation of various observations. Their size is in the {\mu}m range and their…
We study the potential of the Pierre Auger detector for horizontal air showers initiated by ultra high energy neutrino. Assuming some simple trigger requirements we obtain measurable event rates for neutrino fluxes from AGN, from…
The Pierre Auger (cosmic ray) Observatory provides a laboratory for studying fundamental physics at energies far beyond those available at colliders. The Observatory is sensitive not only to hadrons and photons, but can in principle detect…
There are at least three sources of cosmic quarks in the universe. One, the quark nuggets which may survive beyond a certain baryon number during the phase transition from quarks to hadrons microseconds after the big bang. These quark…