Prospects for macroscopic dark matter detection at space-based and suborbital experiments

We compare two different formalisms for modeling the energy deposition of macroscopically sized/massive quark nuggets (also known as macros) in the Earth's atmosphere. We show that for a reference mass of 1 g, there is a discrepancy in the macro luminosity of about 14 orders of magnitude between the predictions of the two formalisms. Armed with our finding we estimate the sensitivity for macro detection at space-based (Mini-EUSO and POEMMA) and suborbital (EUSO-SPB2) experiments. Copyright (C) 2021 EPLA

Automated summary

Two different formalisms for modeling the energy deposition of macroscopically sized quark nuggets were compared, revealing a significant discrepancy in macro luminosity predictions. This finding was used to estimate the sensitivity for macro detection in space-based and suborbital experiments.