The search for cosmic strangelets with the supersonic concorde and with JACEE's circumpolar balloon flight in Antarctica

Authors

Yoshiyuki Takahashi, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
J. N. Capdevielle, Collège de France
A. Kawahara, Hiroshima University
Y. Takao, Hiroshima University
T. Sugitate, Hiroshima University
O. Miyamura, Hiroshima University
O. Miyamura, Hiroshima University
T. Ogata, The University of Tokyo
B. L. Dong, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Y. Takahashi, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
K. Asakimori, Shoei Junior College
T. H. Burnett, University of Washington
M. L. Cherry, Louisiana State University
M. J. Christl, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
S. Dake, Kobe University
J. H. Derrickson, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
W. F. Fountain, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
M. Fuki, Kochi University
J. C. Gregory, The University of Alabama in Huntsville
R. Holynski, Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences
A. Iyono, Okayama University of Science
W. V. Jones, Louisiana State University
A. Kawahara, Hiroshima University
M. Kobayashi, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Tsukuba
J. Lord, University of Washington
K. H. Moon, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
H. Oda, Kobe University
T. Ogata, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research
E. D. Olson, University of Washington
T. A. Parnell, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
S. C. Strausz, University of Washington
T. Sugitate, Hiroshima University
Y. Takahashi, The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-1996

Abstract

The search for cosmic strangelet nuclei was carried out by two experiments with emulsion chambers. A balloon-borne JACEE emulsion chamber was flown at 3.5 g/cm2 for 200 h in Antarctica (JACEE-10 experiment) and the Concorde flights were made by ECHOS at an atmospheric depth of 110 g/cm2 between Paris and New York. No nuclei with Z ≥ 30 survived after traversing 60-120 g/cm2 of the detector materials in the JACEE instruments. No evidence for a long mean free path were found in the zenith angle distribution for Z/β ≥ 26 nuclei. The exposure factor used by the JACEE was 72 m2 h sr. The intensity upperbounds, I ≤ (2.2-9.7) × 10-2/m2 h sr, were obtained for strangelets having an atmospheric attenuation length of 220-50 g/cm2, which corresponds to the case for mass number A = 100-10000 and Z/β ≥ 13. Concorde experiments (ECHOS) used both a thin and a thick emulsion chamber. The total exposure was 209 m2 h sr and no candidates with charge Z ≥ 30 were found. The largest track had Z/β = 28.6 ± 1.29 with β ∼ 1. Nuclei observed with charge 13 ≤ Z ≤ 30 were consistent with the survival intensity of ordinary nuclei. The flux bounds from the ECHOS experiments were I ≤ (2.1-5.0) × 10-2/m2 h for strangelets with mass number 100≤A≤1000. © J.C. Baltzer AG, Science Publishers.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Hyperfine Interactions

First Page

99

Last Page

111

Recommended Citation

Takahashi, Y., Capdevielle, J., Kawahara, A., Takao, Y., Sugitate, T., Miyamura, O., Miyamura, O., Ogata, T., Dong, B., Takahashi, Y., Asakimori, K., Burnett, T., Cherry, M., Christl, M., Dake, S., Derrickson, J., Fountain, W., Fuki, M., Gregory, J., Holynski, R., Iyono, A., Jones, W., Kawahara, A., Kobayashi, M., Lord, J., Moon, K., Oda, H., Ogata, T., Olson, E., Parnell, T., Strausz, S., Sugitate, T., & Takahashi, Y. (1996). The search for cosmic strangelets with the supersonic concorde and with JACEE's circumpolar balloon flight in Antarctica. Hyperfine Interactions, 103 (1), 99-111. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02317346