CAPTURE CONDITIONS FOR STRANGELETS IN THE GEOMAGNETIC FIELD

Abstract

Strangelets coming from the interstellar medium are an interesting target in experiments searching for evidence of this hypothetic state of hadronic matter. For a stationary population of strangelets to be trapped by the geomagnetic field, these particles would have to fulfill certain conditions, namely having magnetic rigidities above the geomagnetic cutoff and below a certain threshold for adiabatic motion. For totally ionized strangelets these two conditions prevent them to be stably trapped if one considers that a similar mechanism resulting in the anomalous cosmic rays belt should also be responsible for strangelet trapping. The situation could be different if those particles could reach the earth with an effective charge less than total ionization, since it would lower the particle's magnetic rigidity, but cross sections are much too low to allow interstellar electronic recombination for strangelets in the low baryonic number range. If traces of strangelets are indeed measured as a component of the radiation belt, alternative methods for their capture have to be proposed.