Dark matter in the form of axion quark nuggets : formation, detections, and evidence ...

• Main Author: Liang, Xunyu
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2022
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0418614; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0418614

Over two decades of development since its establishment, the axion quark nugget (AQN) model is one of the best-studied macroscopic dark matter (DM) candidates, with a mass of grams and a size of around 0.1 micrometres. It naturally explains the observed similarity between the dark and visible densities in the Universe, i.e. Ωᴅᴍ~Ω????i????, with no fitting parameters, while many conventional DM candidates such as the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and axions do not. This dissertation presents numerous key developments of the AQN model, including the formation mechanism for AQNs in the early Universe and new search strategies such as axion detection and a global network of synchronized detectors. Lastly, we discuss potential evidence of AQNs from the anomalous events recently observed by the Telescope Array (TA) and ANtarctic Impulse Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiments. ...