The XXX International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics (Neutrino 2022)

Sensitivity of the KM3NeT detector to a flux of nuclearites

Not scheduled

5m

Virtual Seoul

Poster Astrophysical neutrinos Poster

Speaker

Alice Paun (Institute of Space Science, Romania)

Description

Over the past decades, theories have predicted the existence of heavy compact objects containing an extremely dense form of exotic matter named Strange Quark Matter (SQM). This type of hypothetical matter is composed of nearly equal quantities of up, down and strange quarks and is supposed to be the ground state of Quantum Chromodynamics. Nuclearites are the massive component of SQM particles. Some studies show that nuclearites heavier than 10¹³ GeV with velocities of approximately 250 km/s could reach the Earth and could be observed by neutrino telescopes. KM3NeT is a network of deep-sea neutrino telescopes located in the Mediterranean Sea, dedicated to the search for high-energy cosmic neutrinos and the study of neutrino properties. The KM3NeT detector is currently under construction and is already taking data with the first installed lines. The nuclearites can be detected by the instrumented area through the visible blackbody radiation generated along their path. The detection and characterization of this type of particles could make breakthrough discoveries in the fundamental physics and could provide information on the Dark Matter component of the Universe. In this contribution, Monte Carlo simulations are used in order to evaluate the detector response to nuclearites and preliminary results on the sensitivities of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope for a flux of downgoing nuclearites are presented.