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Strangelet formation in a first-order cosmic QCD transition

Determine whether a first-order confinement–deconfinement transition in the Early Universe, potentially induced by large lepton asymmetries, enables the formation of strange quark matter strangelets via Witten’s 1984 hadronization/coalescence mechanism.

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Background

Lattice QCD indicates that at small baryon chemical potential the confinement/deconfinement transition is a smooth crossover, which historically undermined Witten’s original strangelet formation scenario that relied on a first-order transition.

Recent work suggests that large lepton asymmetries could push the cosmic trajectory through a first-order QCD transition. Whether this reinstates the conditions necessary for producing cosmological strangelets through Witten’s mechanism remains unresolved and has implications for associated gravitational-wave signals and dark matter phenomenology.

References

Recently, it has been shown that, if large leptonic asymmetries are taken into account (which is not excluded by cosmology), the trajectory followed by the Early Universe can indeed pass through a first order transition. It is not yet clear if this will open again the possibility of forming strangelets in the Early Universe following the scheme outlined by Witten.

— Strange quark matter as dark matter: 40 years later, a reappraisal (2404.12094 - Clemente et al., 18 Apr 2024) in Introduction (Section 1)