Abstract
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 ~85% of the universe’s mass and which has been a mystery for decades. Previous efforts to detect quark nuggets assumed that the nuclear-density core interacts directly with the surrounding matter so the stopping power is minimal. Tatsumi found that quark nuggets could well exist as a ferromagnetic liquid with a ~1012-T magnetic field. We find that the magnetic field produces a magnetopause with surrounding plasma, as the earth’s magnetic field produces a magnetopause with the solar wind, and substantially increases their energy deposition rate in matter. We use the magnetopause model to compute the energy deposition as a function of quark-nugget mass and to analyze testing the quark-nugget hypothesis for dark matter by observations in air, water, and land. We conclude the water option is most promising.
Highlights
About 85%1 of the universe’s mass[2,3,4] does not interact strongly with light; it is called dark matter[5]
Full Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD) calculations of quark-nugget formation and stability are still impractical, so the successful MIT Bag Model has been used with its inherent limitations[22]
Additional experiments at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) may determine whether the process is a first order phase transition or the crossover process
Summary
The cross section Qn for direct interaction of a quark nugget of mass M with the surrounding matter has been assumed to be the cross sectional area of its core of mass density ρqn ~2.1 × 1017 kg/m3 and is given by. The enhanced energy deposition from the magnetopause effect offers at least three possibilities for detecting magnetized quark nuggets: brightness of high-velocity luminous objects in the atmosphere, acoustic waves from impacts in water, and size of craters in earth when no meteorite material was found. The detectable event rate as a function of mass depends on (1) the incident flux as a function of mass, (2) the sensitivity of the hydrophone as a function of frequency and direction, (3) the background noise level, (4) the conversion of the deposited energy into acoustic energy, and (5) the attenuation of the acoustic pressure with distance from the impact point to the detectors. These preliminary results indicate that detecting ms-duration acoustic signals in shallow water provides a feasible approach for testing the magnetized quark-nugget hypothesis for dark matter in the mass range of 0.001 to 1.0 kg. Testing the quark-nugget hypothesis with the distribution of crater diameters is unlikely to produce unambiguous results
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