Let's assume dark matter is a particle. The DM theories
currently tested, either with direct or indirect detection, cover only a
tiny range of the allowed DM parameters space. A new, viable, DM
candidate, the Axion Quark Nugget (AQN), has been proposed by Zhitnitsky
(2003), partly inspired by the quark nuggets (Witten 1984). In the AQN
model, DM particles are very massive (gram mass) and interact very
rarely, but very strongly, with the baryonic sector. They behave as cold
dark matter, and yet are made of regular matter, without contradicting
primordial nucleosynthesis.
In this talk, I will review the basic properties of this model and some
of its astrophysical successes obtained so far. I will then discuss
recent work we have done on how this DM interacts with the solar corona
and how the model can be more thoroughly tested in the future.
Local contact: J.-C. Cuillandre
Organization: M. Bugli
