The exotic characteristics of Centauro-I: a model to describe Centauro-I

In our previous paper on Centauro-I ( Ohsawa et al 2004 Phys. Rev. D 70 074028), we showed that the shower cluster, found in the block 112 of the lower chamber, is produced in the target layer by a number of hadrons with appreciable lateral spread. These hadrons are accompanied by no ( or one at most) gamma-ray( s) with energy above detection threshold, and produce no shower in the upper chamber but 28 visible C-jets ( with the visible energy more than 2 TeV) in the target layer. These characteristics are quite exotic and unable to be described by a fluctuation of ordinary atmospheric families. In the present paper, we propose a model of strange quark matter ( SQM) among the primary cosmic rays to describe the exotic features of the event. A large SQM droplet enters the atmosphere and fragments into a bundle of small strangelets in the atmosphere without emission of gamma-rays, and these small strangelets explode into nucleons in the upper chamber. The number of collisions in the upper chamber is estimated to be as small as 3-4 in contrast to 20-30 collisions in the target layer. We discuss the intensity of Centauro-I together with the exotic events observed by the balloon and satellite experiments, which were also ascribed to strange quark matter.32112333234