Charge and energy spectra of cosmic rays with Z greater than or approximately equal to 60 - The SKYLAB experiment

Shirk, E. K.; Price, P. B.

doi:10.1086/155955

Cited by 98 publications

(53 citation statements)

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“…For lunar soil, we have assumed that strangelets are diluted by geological mixing only among the top 5 meters of lunar soil while for meteorites we have assumed an exposure time of 10 7 years [25] (compared to 4 · 10 9 years for the Earth and moon). The satellite based searches [26,27,28,29](labeled 'h') used combinations of Lexan detectors, Cerenkov counters and scintillators to search for heavily ionizing tracks above Earth's atmosphere. The four experiments noted were sensitive to charge Z 100 which for this plot we have converted into a lower mass limit following the CFL charge-mass relationship noted above.…”

Section: Results Relevant To Strangelets From Strange Star Collisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strangelets: who is looking and how?

Finch¹

2006

J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys.

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Abstract.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 forms and have observed a handful of interesting events but have neither been able to find compelling evidence for stable strangelets nor to rule out their existence. I will survey the current status and near future of such searches with particular emphasis on the idea of SQM from strange star collisions as part of the cosmic ray flux.Strange Quark Matter (SQM) is a proposed state of hadronic matter made up of roughly one-third each of up, down, and strange quarks in a single hadronic bag that can be as small as baryon number A = 2 or as large as a star. It was suggested some 30 years ago that SQM (of which a small chunk is called a "strangelet") might in fact be the true ground state of hadronic matter [1,2]. Whether this is true is still an open question today.The idea that Quark Matter made of only up and down quarks is stable can be dismissed immediately by the observation that normal nuclear matter doesn't decay into it. However, in the case of SQM such a decay would require several simultaneous weak interactions, making it prohibitively unlikely. The stability of SQM cannot yet be determined from first principles within QCD, but has been addressed in various phenomenological models. The most commonly used of these is the MIT Bag Model [3,4] which also has been extended to include the effects of colour superconducting states [5,6]. The results of such calculations are inconclusive, but for a large part of the "reasonable" parameter space in these models, SQM is in fact absolutely stable for baryon number greater than some minimum value (smaller strangelets are disfavored due to curvature energy). This minimum, depending on parameter choices, is generally larger than 50 and smaller than 1000 although shell effects which are important for A 100 may cause islands of stability at smaller A values. The key point is that SQM stability is a question that must be settled experimentally or observationally.If it turns out that SQM is stable, the implications would be potentially tremendous not only for the resultant direct and indirect understanding of the strong interaction but also for practical applications ranging from new materials (effectively, nuclear charges up to Z ≈ 1000 would become possible) to potential as a clean energy source [7].

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Section: Results Relevant To Strangelets From Strange Star Collisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strangelets: who is looking and how?

Finch¹

2006

J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys.

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“…• The Skylab experiment [17], with an exposure of 1.2 × 10 12 cm 2 sr s, did not find any valid candidate, establishing an upper limit of 2.9 ×10 −12 cm 2 sr −1 s −1 (at 90% CL) for particles with Z > 110.…”

Section: Pos(icrc2015)348mentioning

confidence: 97%

New upper limit on strange quark matter flux with the PAMELA space experiment

Ricci¹

2016

Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference — PoS(ICRC2015)

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In this work we present results for direct search of Strange Quark Matter in cosmic rays with the PAMELA space spectrometer. If this state of matter exists it may be present in cosmic rays as particles, called strangelets, having an anomalously high mass-to-charge (A/Z) ratio. A direct search in space is complementary to those from ground based spectrometers. Furthermore, it has the advantage of being potentially capable of directly identifying these particles, without any assumption on their interaction model with Earth's atmosphere and the long term stability in terrestrial and lunar rocks. In the energy range from 1 to ∼ 1.0 × 10 3 GV no such particles were found in the data collected by PAMELA between 2006 and 2009. An upper limit on the strangelet flux in cosmic rays was therefore set for particles with charge 1 ≤ Z ≤ 8 and in mass 4 ≤ A ≤ 1.2 × 10 5 . This limit as a function of mass and as a function of magnetic rigidity allows to constrain models of SQM production and propagation in the Galaxy.

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“…Experiments in space with energy loss capabilities (using, e.g., nuclear-track detectors) include Ariel-6 [414], HEAO-3 [415], Slylab [370] and Trek [371,416] and together constrained the flux of particles with Z ≥ 100 to be less than 2 · 10 −12 cm −2 sr −1 s −1 . This limit applies to nuclearites with masses M 1000 GeV and is actually stronger than limits inferred from searches for heavy isotopes in matter in this mass range (see Section 4).…”

Section: Balloon and Space Particle Telescopesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-collider searches for stable massive particles

et al. 2015

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The theoretical motivation for exotic stable massive particles (SMPs) and the results of SMP searches at non-collider facilities are reviewed. SMPs are defined such that they would be sufficiently long-lived so as to still exist in the cosmos either as Big Bang relics or secondary collision products, and sufficiently massive such that they are typically beyond the reach of any conceivable accelerator-based experiment. The discovery of SMPs would address a number of important questions in modern physics, such as the origin and composition of dark matter and the unification of the fundamental forces. This review outlines the scenarios predicting SMPs and the techniques used at non-collider experiments to look for SMPs in cosmic rays and bound in matter. The limits so far obtained on the fluxes and matter densities of SMPs which possess various detection-relevant properties such as electric and magnetic charge are given.

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Charge and energy spectra of cosmic rays with Z greater than or approximately equal to 60 - The SKYLAB experiment

Cited by 98 publications

References 0 publications

Strangelets: who is looking and how?

Strangelets: who is looking and how?

New upper limit on strange quark matter flux with the PAMELA space experiment

Non-collider searches for stable massive particles

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