Search for Strange Quark Matter and Nuclearites on Board the International Space Station (SQM-ISS): A Future Detector to Search for Massive, Non-Relativistic Objects in Space
Massimo Bianchi,
Francesca Bisconti,
Carl Blaksley,
Valerio Bocci,
Marco Casolino,
Francesco Di Clemente,
Alessandro Drago,
Christer Fuglesang,
Francesco Iacoangeli,
Massimiliano Lattanzi,
Alessandro Marcelli,
Laura Marcelli,
Paolo Natoli,
Etienne Parizot,
Piergiorgio Picozza,
Lech Wiktor Piotrowski,
Zbigniew Plebaniak,
Enzo Reali,
Marco Ricci,
Alessandro Rizzo,
Gabriele Rizzo,
Jacek Szabelski
Affiliations
Massimo Bianchi
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Francesca Bisconti
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Carl Blaksley
RIKEN, Wako 351-0198, Japan
Valerio Bocci
INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), Structure of Rome, 00133 Rome, Italy
Marco Casolino
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Francesco Di Clemente
Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, 44122 Ferrara, Italy
Alessandro Drago
Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, 44122 Ferrara, Italy
Christer Fuglesang
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Francesco Iacoangeli
INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), Structure of Rome, 00133 Rome, Italy
Massimiliano Lattanzi
INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), Structure of Ferrara, 44122 Ferrara, Italy
Alessandro Marcelli
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Laura Marcelli
INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), Structure of Rome Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Paolo Natoli
Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, 44122 Ferrara, Italy
Etienne Parizot
APC (Laboratoire Astroparticule & Cosmologie), Univ Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3, CEA/Irfu, Obs. de Paris, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75013 Paris, France
Piergiorgio Picozza
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Lech Wiktor Piotrowski
Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland
Zbigniew Plebaniak
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Enzo Reali
Physics Department, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, 00133 Rome, Italy
Marco Ricci
INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), National Laboratories of Frascati, 00044 Frascati, Italy
Alessandro Rizzo
ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Radioprotection Institute (IRP), 00196 Rome, Italy
Gabriele Rizzo
Longviews S.r.l., 00134 Rome, Italy
Jacek Szabelski
Stefan Batory Academy of Applied Sciences, Stefana Batorego 64C, 96-100 Skierniewice, Poland
SQM-ISS is a detector that will search from the International Space Station for massive particles possibly present among the cosmic rays. Among them, we mention strange quark matter, Q-Balls, lumps of fermionic exotic compact stars, Primordial Black Holes, mirror matter, Fermi balls, etc. These compact, dense objects would be much heavier than normal nuclei, have velocities of galaxy-bound systems, and would be deeply penetrating. The detector is based on a stack of scintillator and piezoelectric elements which can provide information on both the charge state and mass, with the additional timing information allowing to determine the speed of the particle, searching for particles with velocities of the order of galactic rotation speed (v ≲ 250 km/s). In this work, we describe the apparatus and its observational capabilities.
