Production and detection of metastable strange-quark droplets in heavy-ion collisions

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Considerable theoretical interest has focused on the possibility that not only may multiquark droplets S with large strangeness be metastable, but large extended such objects might be absolutely stable. We calculate the production probability of the S's in heavy-ion collisions by fragmentation and recombination of quarks in baryon-rich, hot quark-gluon matter. Although the results are quite model dependent, we propose a very sensitive detection scheme in which the S's should be able to be seen in the scheduled fixed-target, high-energy, heavy-ion facilities.