Quark Matter Induced Extensive Air Showers

TL;DR

This paper explores how quark matter nuggets, especially antiquark ones, could produce detectable extensive air showers in Earth's atmosphere, offering a novel method to search for dark matter interactions with cosmic ray observatories.

Contribution

It provides a qualitative analysis of air showers caused by antiquark nuggets and suggests observational strategies for detecting dark matter signatures in cosmic ray data.

Findings

Antiquark nuggets can produce large energy depositions leading to extensive air showers.

Distinct features of these showers can differentiate them from standard cosmic ray events.

The Pierre Auger Observatory could potentially detect or constrain such dark matter interactions.

Abstract

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 the nugget will trigger an extensive air shower the particle content of which is similar to that produced by an ultrahigh energy cosmic ray. This paper gives a qualitative description of the basic properties of such a shower. Several distinctions from an air shower initiated by a single ultra high energy nucleus will be described allowing these events to be distinguished from the cosmic ray background. The subtlety of these features may mean that some fraction of the high energy cosmic ray spectrum may in fact be due to this type of dark matter interaction. The estimated flux of dark matter nuggets and the energy deposited in the atmosphere are such that the Pierre Auger Observatory may prove an ideal facility to place constraints on the flux of heavy quark matter objects. This paper attempts to highlight the best techniques to search for a quark matter signature through an extensive air shower signal.