Production and detection of drops of strange matter

Abstract

The theoretical possiblity that strange matter is more stable than nuclear matter has enormous implications. It has been suggested to search for the possible formation of metastable strange matter with a relatively small baryon number A , S drops, in present fixed-target relativistic heavy-ion collisions at BNL and CERN. In this paper we estimate the sensitivity required for the above experiments to be successful. These estimates of the production (and lifetimes) of S drops as a function of A, strangeness S, and electric charge, Z, should be useful in designing and evaluating searches for S drops, ' A Z . For example, the production estimates for metastable S drops with A 5 30 indicate that they could be detected with dedicated experiments having high sensitivity. Furthermore, specific searches for metastable S drops with Z < 0 would have the advantage of a low intrinsic background. PACS number(s): 12.38. Mh, 12.40.Aa, 25.70.N~

The Search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma

“…Mechanisms for the separation of strange quark matter have been conceived in the environment of the early universe [14] as well as in relativistic heavy ion reactions [21,22,23,24]. While there exist rather strong astrophysical limits on the density of strange quark matter "nuggets" (strangelets) in our universe [25], the search for strange quark matter produced in heavy ion collisions has only just begun.…”

Production ofHΛ3andHΛ4in centralArmstrong1, Barish2, Batsouli3 et al. 2004Phys. Rev. C553212View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…George, (13,f ) S.V. Greene, (11) P. Haridas, (7,g) J.C. Hill, (5) A.S. Hirsch, (9) R. Hoversten, (5) H.Z. Huang, (2) H. Jaradat, (12) B.S.…”

“…Toothacker, (8,e) G. Van Buren, (7,2,o) F.K. Wohn, (5) Z. Xu (13) (The E864 Collaboration) (1) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973 (2) University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095 (3) University of California at Riverside, Riverside, California 92521 (4) Columbia University, New York 10027 (5) Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011 (6) University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003 (7) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (8) Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 (9) Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 (10) United States Military Academy, West Point, New York 10996 (11) Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235 (12) Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48201 (13) Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520…”

Flavor-Specific InclusiveBDecays to Charm

“…The first ratio will be less than 1.0 because of b ! u transitions (2jV ub ͞V cb j 2 , where the 2 is a phase space factor), lower vertex D s ͑2%͒, bound cc states (3.0 6 0.5% [14]), baryons (6.5 6 1.5% [15]), and b ! sg (to be extracted).…”