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Search for Stable Strange Quark Matter in Lunar Soil

K. Han, J. Ashenfelter, A. Chikanian, W. Emmet, L. E. Finch, A. Heinz, J. Madsen, R. D. Majka, B. Monreal, and J. Sandweiss
Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 092302 – Published 27 August 2009
Physics logo See Synopsis: Strangelets in the night

Abstract

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=70amu 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 1016 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.

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  • Received 27 March 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.092302

©2009 American Physical Society

Synopsis

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Strangelets in the night

Published 31 August 2009

The Moon might be stranger than we think.

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Authors & Affiliations

K. Han1, J. Ashenfelter2, A. Chikanian1, W. Emmet1, L. E. Finch1, A. Heinz2, J. Madsen3, R. D. Majka1, B. Monreal4,*, and J. Sandweiss1

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

  • *Current address: Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.

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Issue

Vol. 103, Iss. 9 — 28 August 2009

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