The Creation of Strange Quark Matter Droplets as a Unique Signature for Quark - Gluon Plasma Formation in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
Sep 23, 1988
38 pages
Published in:
- Phys.Rev.D 38 (1988) 2797-2807
Report number:
- UFTP-212-1988
Citations per year
Abstract: (APS)
We demonstrate that strangeness separates in the Gibbs-phase coexistence between a baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma and hadron matter, even at T=0. For finite temperatures this is due to the associated production of kaons (containing s¯ quarks) in the hadron phase while s quarks remain in the deconfined phase. The s-s¯ separation results in a strong enhancement of the s-quark abundance in the quark phase. This mechanism is further supported by cooling and net strangeness enrichment due to the prefreezeout evaporation of pions and K+, K0, which carry away entropy and anti- strangeness from the system. Metastable droplets (i.e., stable as far as weak interactions are not regarded) of strange-quark matter (‘‘strangelets’’) can thus be formed during the phase transition. Such cool, compact, long-lived clusters could be experimentally observed by their unusually small Z/A ratio (≤0.1–0.3). Even if the strange-quark-matter phase is not stable under strong interactions, it should be observable by the delayed correlated emission of several hyperons. This would serve as a unique signature for the transient formation of a quark-gluon plasma.- QUARK: MATTER
- MATTER: STRANGENESS
- MODEL: DROPLET
- QUARK GLUON: PLASMA
- NUCLEUS NUCLEUS: NUCLEAR REACTION
- SCATTERING: HEAVY ION
- HEAVY ION: SCATTERING
- THERMODYNAMICS: CRITICAL PHENOMENA
- LAMBDA: EMISSION
- EMISSION: LAMBDA
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