Energy Losses of Q-balls

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interactions and energy losses of Q-balls as they pass through Earth, analyzing their detectability with various detectors and providing detailed calculations for different detection methods.

Contribution

It presents new detailed calculations of Q-ball energy losses in matter and evaluates their detectability with multiple experimental techniques.

Findings

Q-balls have specific energy loss signatures in matter.

Detection probabilities depend on Q-ball velocities and detector configurations.

Quantitative estimates of light yield and ionization in detectors are provided.

Abstract

After a short review of Q-balls properties, in this paper we discuss their interaction with matter, and their energy losses in the earth, for a large range of velocities. These calculations are used to compute the fractional angular acceptance of a detector located at Gran Sasso Laboratory. Furthermore we computed the light yield in liquid scintillators, the ionization in streamer tubes and the Restricted Energy Loss in the CR39 nuclear track detector.