Search for Stable Strange Quark Matter in Lunar Soil

Journal Article · Fri Aug 28 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.103.092302· OSTI ID:21364647

Han, K; Chikanian, A; Emmet, W; Finch, L E; Majka, R D; Sandweiss, J ^[1]; Ashenfelter, J; Heinz, A ^[2]; Madsen, J ^[3]; Monreal, B ^[4]

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1. Physics Department, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 (United States)
2. A. W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 (United States)
3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C (Denmark)
4. Laboratory for Nuclear Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (United States)

We report results from a search for strangelets (small chunks of strange quark matter) in lunar soil using the Yale WNSL accelerator as a mass spectrometer. We have searched over a range in mass from A=42 to A=70 amu for nuclear charges 5, 6, 8, 9, and 11. No strangelets were found in the experiment. For strangelets with nuclear charge 8, a concentration in lunar soil higher than 10{sup -16} is excluded at the 95% confidence level. The implied limit on the strangelet flux in cosmic rays is the most sensitive to date for the covered range and is relevant to both recent theoretical flux predictions and a strangelet candidate event found by the AMS-01 experiment.

• OSTI ID: 21364647
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 103, Issue 9; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.092302; (c) 2009 The American Physical Society; ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ATOMIC NUMBER
COSMIC RADIATION
LUNAR MATERIALS
MASS SPECTROMETERS
MOON
QUARK MATTER
S QUARKS
SOILS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FERMIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
MATERIALS
MATTER
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
QUARKS
RADIATIONS
SATELLITES
SPECTROMETERS
STRANGE PARTICLES