Cosmic-ray strangelets in the Earth's atmosphere

Abstract

If strange quark matter is stable in small lumps, we expect to find such lumps, called ``strangelets'', on Earth due to a steady flux in cosmic rays. Following recent astrophysical models, we predict the strangelet flux at the top of the atmosphere, and trace the strangelets' behavior in atmospheric chemistry and circulation. We show that several strangelet species may have large abundances in the atmosphere; that they should respond favorably to laboratory-scale preconcentration techniques; and that they present promising targets for mass spectroscopy experiments.

28 pages, 4 figures, revtex4

References in corpus (4)

• Color-flavor locked strangelets
• Strangelet propagation and cosmic ray flux
• Search for anomalously heavy isotopes of helium in the Earth's atmosphere
• Binary coalescence of a strange star with a black hole: Newtonian results

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Thermodynamic consistency, quark mass scaling, and properties of strange matter
• Search for stable Strange Quark Matter in lunar soil
• Charge, strangeness and radius of strangelets
• From strangelets to strange stars: A unified description
• Muon bundles as a sign of strangelets from the Universe
• Thomas-Fermi Statistical Models of Finite Quark Matter
• Can strangelets be detected in a large LAr neutrino detector?