Q-balls in Underground Experiments

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties and interactions of Q-balls with matter, analyzing their energy losses in Earth and various detectors to assess detection capabilities in underground experiments.

Contribution

It provides detailed calculations of Q-ball interactions, energy losses, and detector responses, offering new insights for underground Q-ball searches.

Findings

Computed fractional geometrical acceptance of MACRO detector

Analyzed energy losses in scintillators, streamer tubes, and CR39 detectors

Assessed detection feasibility of Q-balls in underground experiments

Abstract

In this paper we present some features of Q-balls and we discuss their interactions with matter, and their energy losses in the Earth, for a large range of velocities. These calculations are used to compute the fractional geometrical acceptance of the MACRO detector. Furthermore a systematic analysis of the energy losses of Q-balls in three types of detectors is investigated. More specifically we have computed the light yield in liquid scintillators, the ionization in streamer tubes and the Restricted Energy Loss in the CR39 nuclear track detectors.