Atmospheric Radio Signals From Galactic Dark Matter

Abstract

If the dark matter of our galaxy is composed of nuggets of quarks or antiquarks in a colour superconducting phase there will be a small but non-zero flux of these objects through the Earth's atmosphere. A nugget of quark matter will deposit only a small fraction of its kinetic energy in the atmosphere and is unlikely to be detectable. If however the impacting object is composed of antiquarks the energy deposited can be quite large and contain a significant charged particle content. These relativistic secondary particles will subsequently be deflected by the earth's magnetic field resulting in the emission of synchrotron radiation. This work will argue that this radiation should be detectable at radio frequencies and that present and proposed experiments are capable of detecting such a signal.