Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

A production scenario of the galactic strangelets and an estimation of their possible flux in the solar neighborhood

Sayan Biswas

Centre for Astroparticle Physics and Space Science, Bose Institute

Finite lumps of strange quark matter in the form of strangelets, the theorized
absolute ground state of QCD, are supposed to be more stable than the 56Fe nuclei. Recent simulation studies suggest that a major source of
strangelets in the Galaxy may be the fragmentation of bulk strange matter tidally released in the
merger of strange stars in compact binary stellar systems. Here, we determine
a plausible baryon number (or mass) distribution of such strangelets by invok-
ing a statistical disassembly model often used in nuclear systems. Strangelets,
thus produced, are likely to be accelerated by the shock front generated in the
same merger event thereby gaining a power law energy spectrum with spectral
index close to -2. We estimate the fluxes of such accelerated strangelets of different masses in the neighborhood of the Sun considering diffusive propagation
of strangelets in the stochastic magnetic field of the interstellar medium. The
determined integral fluxes are found to be consistent with the null
results of the PAMELA experiment. The reported limit of sensitivity of the AMS-02 exper-
iment suggests that the experiment should be able to detect strangelet events,
as per the prediction of the proposed model, thereby (possibly) vindicating the
strange matter hypothesis.