Strange quark matter fragmentation in astrophysical events

The conjecture of Bodmer-Witten-Terazawa suggesting a form of quark matter (Strange Quark Matter) as the ground state of hadronic interactions has been studied in laboratory and astrophysical contexts by a large number of authors. If strange stars exist, some violent events involving these compact objects, such as mergers and even their formation process, might eject some strange matter into the interstellar medium that could be detected as a trace signal in the cosmic ray flux. To evaluate this possibility, it is necessary to understand how this matter in bulk would fragment in the form of strangelets (small lumps of strange quark matter in which finite effects become important). We calculate the mass distribution outcome using the statistical multifragmentation model and point out several caveats affecting it. In particular, the possibility that strangelets fragmentation will render a tiny fraction of contamination in the cosmic ray flux is discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Semiflow selection and Markov selection theorems

The deterministic analog of the Markov property of a time-homogeneous Markov process is the semigroup property of solutions of an autonomous differential equation. The semigroup property arises naturally when the solutions of a differential equation are unique, and leads to a semiflow. We prove an abstract result on measurable selection of a semiflow for the situations without uniqueness. We outline applications to ODEs, PDEs, differential inclusions, etc. Our proof of the semiflow selection theorem is motivated by N. V. Krylov's Markov selection theorem. To accentuate this connection, we include a new version of the Markov selection theorem related to more recent papers of Flandoli & Romito and Goldys et al.Comment: In this revised version we have added a new abstract result in Sec. 2. It is used to correct the Navier-Stokes example in application

Interaction of strangelets with ordinary nuclei

Strangelets (hypothetical stable lumps of strange quarkmatter) of astrophysical origin may be ultimately detected in specific cosmic ray experiments. The initial mass distribution resulting from the possible astrophysical production sites would be subject to reprocessing in the interstellar medium and in the earth's atmosphere. In order to get a better understanding of the claims for the detection of this still hypothetic state of hadronic matter, we present a study of strangelet-nucleus interactions including several physical processes of interest (abrasion, fusion, fission, excitation and de-excitation of the strangelets), to address the fate of the baryon number along the strangelet path. It is shown that, although fusion may be important for low-energy strangelets in the interstellar medium (thus increasing the initial baryon number A), in the earth's atmosphere the loss of the baryon number should be the dominant process. The consequences of these findings are briefly addressed