Macroscopic Dark Matter: (Dark) Quark Nuggets

Speaker: Yang Bai

Macroscopic nuggets of quark matter were proposed several decades ago as a candidate for dark matter. The formation of these objects in the early universe requires the QCD phase transition to be first order. In this talk, the nuggets that are made of our quarks and dark quarks will be discussed. Their masses could be as heavy as a skyscraper, but with a size as small as a millimeter. I will also discuss various potential signatures including gravitational wave background and gravitational lensing.