Supercritically charged objects and electron-positron pair creation

2020/05/21 by Cheng-Jun Xia, She-Sheng Xue, Renxin Xu +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Nuclear physics research studies #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions

paper · doi:10.1103/physrevd.101.103031

openalex publication_date 2020/05/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We investigate the stability and e⁺e^\ensuremath- pair creation of supercritically charged superheavy nuclei, udQM nuggets, strangelets, and strangeon nuggets based on the Thomas-Fermi approximation. The model parameters are fixed by reproducing masses and charge properties of these supercritically charged objects reported in earlier publications. It is found that udQM nuggets, strangelets, and strangeon nuggets may be more stable than ⁵⁶Fe at the baryon number A\ensuremath\gtrsim315, 5\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10⁴, and 1.2\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10⁸, respectively. For those stable against neutron emission, the most massive superheavy element has a baryon number \ensuremath∼965, while udQM nuggets, strangelets, and strangeon nuggets need to have baryon numbers larger than 39, 433, and 2.7\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10⁵. The e⁺e^\ensuremath- pair creation will inevitably start for superheavy nuclei with charge numbers Z\ensuremath≥177, for udQM nuggets with Z\ensuremath≥163, for strangelets with Z\ensuremath≥192, and for strangeon nuggets with Z\ensuremath≥212. A universal relation Q/R_e=(m_e\ensuremath-\ensuremathμ_e)/\ensuremathα is obtained at a given electron chemical potential \ensuremathμ_e, where Q is the total charge and R_e the radius of electron cloud. The maximum number of Q without causing e⁺e^\ensuremath- pair creation is then fixed by taking \ensuremathμ_e=\ensuremath-m_e. For supercritically charged objects with \ensuremathμ_e<\ensuremath-m_e, the decay rate for e⁺e^\ensuremath- pair production is estimated based on the Jeffreys-Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (JWKB) approximation. It is found that most positrons are emitted at t\ensuremath\lesssim10^\ensuremath-15 s, while a long lasting positron emission can be observed for large objects with R\ensuremath\gtrsim1000 fm. The emission of positrons and electron-positron annihilation from supercritically charged objects may be partially responsible for the short \ensuremathγ-ray burst during the merger of binary compact stars, the 511 keV continuum emission, as well as the narrow faint emission lines in x-ray spectra from galaxies and galaxy clusters.

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Cited by

• Periodic table [wikipedia]