Stringent neutrino flux constraints on anti-quark nugget dark matter

Abstract

Strongly-interacting matter in the form of nuggets of nuclear-density material are not currently excluded as dark matter candidates in the ten gram to hundred kiloton mass range. A recent variation on quark nugget dark matter models postulates that a first-order imbalance between matter and antimatter in the quark-gluon plasma prior to hadron production in the early universe binds up most of the dark matter into heavy (baryon number $B \sim 10^{25}$) anti-quark nuggets in the current epoch, explaining both the dark matter preponderance and the matter-antimatter asymmetry. Interactions of these massive objects with normal matter in the Earth and Sun will lead to annihilation and an associated neutrino flux in the $\sim 20-50$ MeV range. We calculate these fluxes for anti-quark nuggets of sufficient number density to account for the dark matter and find that current neutrino flux limits from Super-Kamiokande provide stringent constraints on several possible scenarios for such objects. Conventional anti-quark nuggets in the previously allowed mass range cannot account for more than $\sim 1/5$ of the dark matter flux; if they are in a color-superconducting phase, then their muon production during matter annihilation must be suppressed by an order of magnitude below prior estimates if they are to remain viable dark matter candidates.