Results of the Search for Strange Quark Matter and Q-balls with the SLIM Experiment

Abstract

The SLIM experiment at the Chacaltaya high altitude laboratory was sensitive to nuclearites and Q-balls, which could be present in the cosmic radiation as possible Dark Matter components. It was sensitive also to strangelets, i.e. small lumps of Strange Quark Matter predicted at such altitudes by various phenomenological models. The analysis of 427 m^2 of Nuclear Track Detectors exposed for 4.22 years showed no candidate event. New upper limits on the flux of downgoing nuclearites and Q-balls at the 90% C.L. were established. The null result also restricts models for strangelets propagation through the Earth atmosphere.

14 pages, 11 EPS figures

References in corpus (5)

• Strangelet propagation and cosmic ray flux
• Magnetic Monopole Search at high altitude with the SLIM experiment
• Fragmentation cross sections of Fe^{26+}, Si^{14+} and C^{6+} ions of 0.3-10 A GeV on polyethylene, CR39 and aluminum targets
• Bulk Etch Rate Measurements and Calibrations of Plastic Nuclear Track Detectors
• Propagation of strangelets in the Earth's atmosphere

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Cold Quark Matter
• Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions
• Magnetic Monopole Search at high altitude with the SLIM experiment
• Fragmentation cross sections of Fe^{26+}, Si^{14+} and C^{6+} ions of 0.3-10 A GeV on polyethylene, CR39 and aluminum targets
• Gravitational waves from the fragmentation of a supersymmetric condensate
• Q-balls in flat potentials
• Spinning Supersymmetric Q-balls
• Limits on the flux of nuclearites and other heavy compact objects from the "Pi of the Sky" project
• Search for heavy long-lived multi-charged particles in the full LHC Run 2 $pp$ collision data at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV using the ATLAS detector
• JUNO Physics and Detector
• The Physics of Q-balls
• Non-collider searches for stable massive particles
• Exploring detection of nuclearites in a large liquid scintillator neutrino detector
• Limits on the nuclearite flux using the ANTARES neutrino telescope
• The virial relation for the Q-balls in the thermal logarithmic potential revisited analytically
• General relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of binary strange star mergers
• Magnetised quark nuggets in the atmosphere
• Models of ultra-heavy dark matter visible to macroscopic mechanical sensing arrays
• Magnetic Monopole Search with the SLIM Experiment