Strange quark matter as dark matter: 40 years later, a reappraisal

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates the potential of strange quark matter as dark matter, exploring conditions for strangelet formation in the early universe, their stability, size distribution, and observational prospects, challenging previous dismissals of this hypothesis.

Contribution

It presents a new analysis of strangelet production, stability, and size distribution, incorporating color-superconducting phases and cosmological constraints, revitalizing the strange quark matter dark matter hypothesis.

Findings

Strangelets can have masses up to 10^{17} grams, compatible with dark matter constraints.

Color-superconducting gaps stabilize high-density strange quark phases.

Size distributions of strangelets align with observational constraints.

Abstract

Forty years ago Witten suggested that dark matter could be composed of macroscopic clusters of strange quark matter. This idea was very popular for several years, but it dropped out of fashion once lattice QCD calculations indicated that the confinement/deconfinement transition, at small baryonic chemical potential, is not first order, which seemed to be a crucial requirement in order to produce large clusters of quarks. Here we revisit the conditions under which strangelets can be produced in the Early Universe. We discuss the impact of an instability in the hadronic phase separating a low density, positive-strange-charge phase from a high-density phase with a negative strange charge. This second phase can rapidly stabilize by forming color-superconducting gaps. The strangelets then undergo partial evaporation. In this way, we obtain distributions of their sizes in agreement with the observational constraints and we discuss the many astrophysical and cosmological implications of these objects. Finally, we examine the most promising techniques to detect this type of strangelets. We also show that strangelets can exist with masses $\lesssim10^{17} \mathrm g$, while primordial black holes are ruled out in that mass range, allowing us to distinguish between these two dark matter candidates.