Production and detection of drops of strange matter

Abstract

The theoretical possibility 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, ${}_{}{}^S{}_{}{}^{}A_{}^Z{}_{}{}^{}$. For example, the production estimates for metastable $S$ drops with $A\lesssim 30$ indicate that they could be detected with dedicated experiments having high sensitivity. Furthermore, specific searches for metastable $S$ drops with $Z<\mathrm{}0\mathrm{}$ would have the advantage of a low intrinsic background.