Inelastic self-interaction cross section of strange quark matter

Characterize the inelastic self-interaction cross section of macroscopic strange quark matter clusters and determine its magnitude and velocity dependence under astrophysically relevant conditions, in comparison to their elastic geometrical cross section.

Background

For the strange quark matter macros considered, the elastic reduced cross section scales with their geometrical size and is extremely small, rendering typical self-interaction constraints largely irrelevant.

However, simulations of mergers involving strange quark stars indicate potentially “sticky” behavior of strange matter, suggesting that inelastic interactions may be significant. Quantifying the inelastic cross section is thus essential to assess possible impacts on structure formation and to compare with existing conservative bounds.