Strange quark matter fragmentation in astrophysical events

Abstract

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 strange stars exist, some violent events involving these compact objects, such as mergers and even their formation process, might eject some strange matter into the interstellar medium that could be detected as a trace signal in the cosmic ray flux. To evaluate this possibility, it is necessary to understand how this matter in bulk would fragment in the form of strangelets (small lumps of strange quark matter in which finite effects become important). We calculate the mass distribution outcome using the statistical multifragmentation model and point out several caveats affecting it. In particular, the possibility that strangelets fragmentation will render a tiny fraction of contamination in the cosmic ray flux is discussed.

13 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Strangelet propagation and cosmic ray flux
• Thickness of the strangelet-crystal crust of a strange star
• The final phase of inspiral of strange quark star binaries

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• Model of hybrid star with baryonic and strange quark matter in Tolman-Kuchowicz spacetime
• Merging strangeon stars II: the ejecta and light curves
• Oscillating Magnetized Color Superconducting Quark Stars
• Counting States: A Combinatorial Analysis of SQM Fragmentation
• Maximum mass limit of strange stars in quadratic curvature-matter coupled gravity