Cosmic ray strangelets

Abstract

Searching for strangelets in cosmic rays may be the best way to test the possible stability of strange quark matter. I review calculations of the astrophysical strangelet flux in the GV--TV rigidity range, which will be investigated from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) on the International Space Station, and discuss the merits of strangelets as ultra-high energy cosmic rays at EeV--ZeV energies, beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff. I also address some ``counter-arguments'' sometimes raised against the possibility of stable strangelets. It will be argued that stability of strange quark matter remains a viable possibility, which must be tested by experiments.

8 pages. SQM2004 plenary talk. Submitted to Journal of Physics G

References in corpus (4)

• Strange Quark Matter and Compact Stars
• A Tale of Two Mergers: Searching for Strangeness in Compact Stars
• Dense quark matter in compact stars
• Reply to Comment on Strangelets as Cosmic Rays beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Cutoff

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Can very compact and very massive neutron stars both exist?
• The Electrosphere of Macroscopic "Quark Nuclei": A Source for Diffuse MeV Emissions from Dark Matter
• Quark Matter Induced Extensive Air Showers
• Color-flavor locked strange matter and strangelets at finite temperature
• Strangelets accelerated by pulsars in galactic cosmic rays
• The search for Primordial Quark Nuggets among Near Earth Asteroids
• Trapping of strangelets in the geomagnetic field
• Electric and magnetic axion quark nuggets, their stability and their detection