Muon bundles as a sign of strangelets from the Universe

Abstract

Recently the CERN ALICE experiment, in its dedicated cosmic ray run, observed muon bundles of very high multiplicities, thereby confirming similar findings from the LEP era at CERN (in the CosmoLEP project). Originally it was argued that they apparently stem from the primary cosmic rays with a heavy masses. We propose an alternative possibility arguing that muonic bundles of highest multiplicity are produced by strangelets, hypothetical stable lumps of strange quark matter infiltrating our Universe. We also address the possibility of additionally deducing their directionality which could be of astrophysical interest. Significant evidence for anisotropy of arrival directions of the observed high multiplicity muonic bundles is found. Estimated directionality suggests their possible extragalactic provenance.

12 pages, 8 figures. Manuscript accepted by The Astrophysical Journal

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• Hybrid Strangeon Stars
• On self-gravitating strange dark matter halos around galaxies
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• Scaling violation in interaction of cosmic ray hadrons and the nature of the 3 PeV knee in the spectrum of primary cosmic rays
• Multimuons in cosmic-ray events as seen in ALICE at the LHC
• The Puzzle of Muons in Extensive Air Showers
• Muon bundles from the Universe