Related papers: Cosmic ray strangelets
We construct strangelets, taking into account electrostatic effects, including Debye screening, and arbitrary surface tension sigma of the interface between vacuum and quark matter. We find that there is a critical surface tension…
The conjecture of Bodmer-Witten-Terazawa suggesting a form of quark matter (Strange Quark Matter) as the ground state of hadronic interactions has been studied in laboratory and astrophysical contexts by a large number of authors. If…
It has been over 30 years since the first suggestion that the true ground state of cold hadronic matter might be not nuclear matter but rather strange quark matter (SQM). Ever since, searches for stable SQM have been proceeding in various…
We study the stability of small strangelets by employing a simple model of strange matter as a gas of non-interacting fermions confined in a bag. We solve the Dirac equation and populate the energy levels of the bag one quark at a time. Our…
Cosmic rays may provide opportunities for probing fundamental physics. For example, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays might originate from the decays of metastable heavy particles, and astrophysical gamma rays can be used to test models of…
In this paper we consider the possibility that strange quark matter may be manifested in the form of strangelet crystal planets. These planet-like objects are made up of nuggets of strange quark matter (SQM), organized in a crystalline…
3-flavor quark matter (strange quark matter; SQM) can be stable or metastable for a wide range of strong interaction parameters. If so, SQM can play an important role in cosmology, neutron stars, cosmic ray physics, and relativistic…
Recently new data from the Cosmo-LEP project appeared, this time from DELPHI detector. They essentially confirm the findings reported some time ago by ALEPH, namely the appearence of bundles of muons with unexpectedly high multiplicities,…
We report results from a search for strangelets (small chunks of Strange Quark Matter) in lunar soil using the Yale WNSL accelerator as a mass spectrometer. We have searched over a range in mass from A=42 to A=70 amu for nuclear charges 5,…
The strength and spectrum of the extragalactic magnetic field are still unknown. Its measurement would help answer the question of whether galactic fields are purely a primordial relic or were dynamically enhanced from a much smaller…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays interacting with the radiation fields in the universe cause electromagnetic cascades resulting in a flux of extragalactic gamma rays, detectable to some 100 GeV. Recent precise measurements of the extragalactic…
Over the last 30 years or so, a handful of events observed in ground-based cosmic ray detectors seem to have opened a new window in the field of high-energy astrophysics. These events have energies exceeding 5x10**19 eV (the region of the…
We review progress in high-energy cosmic ray physics focusing on recent experimental results and models developed for their interpretation. Emphasis is put on the propagation of charged cosmic rays, covering the whole range from $\sim…
Recent accurate measurements of cosmic-ray (CR) protons and nuclei by ATIC-2, CREAM, and PAMELA reveal: a) unexpected spectral hardening in the spectra of CR species above a few hundred GeV per nucleon, b) a harder spectrum of He compared…
We investigate the stability of strange quark matter and the properties of the cor- responding strange stars, within a wide range of quark mass scaling. The calculation shows that the resulting maximum mass always lies between 1.5M_{sun}…
A complete understanding of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum remains a challenge to theory that must be met by comprehensive modeling efforts. One of these is the subject of the present study, namely, an explanation of the recently discovered…
Motivated by some recent cosmic ray experiments we study the properties of strange quark matter near flavour equilibrium. Using Fermi-gas model we argue that, contrary to some claims, the geometrical radii of quark matter strangelets are…
Existing data hints that high energy cosmic ray experiments may offer the most promissing shot at finding a dark matter particle. A search in the PeV mass range is suggested, where the discovery of such a particle might help explain the GZK…
Observations of cosmic rays with energies above ~ 4 x 10^{10} GeV have inspired several speculative suggestions concerning their origin. The crucial question is whether or not the spectrum exhibits the expected `GZK cutoff' at this energy…
In light of recent observations of an anomalous excess of high-energy positrons and electrons by the PAMELA and Fermi LAT experiments, we investigate exotic cosmic-ray signatures in scenarios with unstable dark matter that decays with an…