How Can Strange Quark Matter Occur Deeply in the Atmosphere?

Some recent developments concerning the role of strange quark matter for astrophysical systems and the QCD phase transition in the early universe are addressed. Causality constraints of the soft nuclear equation of state as extracted from subthreshold kaon production in heavy-ion collisions are used to derive an upper mass limit for compact stars. The interplay between the viscosity of strange quark matter and the gravitational wave emission from rotation-powered pulsars are ...

The physics of strange quark matter in the core of compact stars and recent compact star data is reviewed. Emphasis is put on the possible existence of a third family of strange quark stars.

It is possible that a system composed of up, down and strange quarks consists the true ground state of nuclear matter at high densities and low temperatures. This exotic plasma, called strange quark matter (SQM), seems to be even more favorable energetically if quarks are in a superconducting state, the so-called color-flavor locked state. Here are presented calculations made on the basis of the MIT bag model considering the influence of finite temperature on the allowed para...

Matter consisting of up, down and strange quarks, socalled Strange Quark Matter, has been hypothesized to be stable in bulk, and conceivably stable or metastable in finite systems---strangelets---as an alternative state to ordinary baryonic matter. Strangelets, if they exist, may be relics from the hot and dense early universe, or they could be produced in high energy events, such as collisions of heavy nuclei at relativistic speeds. This thesis investigates the implications ...

We reexamine the surface composition of strange stars. Strange quark stars are hypothetical compact stars which could exist if strange quark matter was absolutely stable. It is widely accepted that they are characterized by an enormous density gradient ($~10^{26}$ g/cm$^4$) and large electric fields at surface. By investigating the possibility of realizing a heterogeneous crust, comprised of nuggets of strange quark matter embedded in an uniform electron background, we find t...

The QCD phase transition has important consequences in the context of both the early universe as well as compact stars. Such transitions are being studied for high temperature and small chemical potential scenario in the laboratory. There are also plans to study systems with large chemical potential and small temperatures. Here we have reviewed the role of strange quark matter and the phase transition in all the above scenarios.

We investigate, at both zero and finite temperature, the properties of strangelets versus the electric charge Z and strangeness S. The strangelet radius is not a monotonic function of either charge or strangeness, and a minimum is reached in the (Z, S) plane. However, the thermodynamically stable strangelets do not correspond to the radius minimum. The minimum radius always appears at positive strangeness, while the stable radius may appear at negative strangeness for very sm...

This paper gives an brief overview of the structure of hypothetical strange quarks stars (quark stars, for short), which are made of absolutely stable 3-flavor strange quark matter. Such objects can be either bare or enveloped in thin nuclear crusts, which consist of heavy ions immersed in an electron gas. In contrast to neutron stars, the structure of quark stars is determined by two (rather than one) parameters, the central star density and the density at the base of the cr...

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 nuclea...

If the dark matter of our galaxy is composed of nuggets of quarks or antiquarks in a colour superconducting phase there will be a small but non-zero flux of these objects through the Earth's atmosphere. A nugget of quark matter will deposit only a small fraction of its kinetic energy in the atmosphere and is likely to be undetectable. If however the impacting object is composed of antiquarks the energy deposited can be quite large. In this case nuclear annihilations within th...