Formation and identification of centauro and strangelets in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC

We present a phenomenological model for the formation and decay of a cosmic ray Centauro fireball in the baryon-rich projectile fragmentation rapidity region in nucleus-nucleus interactions. Our model naturally incorporates the possibility of Strangelet formation, Strangelets being conjectured to be the “strongly penetrating component” observed in hadron-rich cosmic ray events. Based on this model we have performed Monte-Carlo simulations to study the Centauro and Strangelet dynamic and kinematic characteristics in central Pb + Pb collisions at LHC energies, as well as their identification by the detector system CASTOR. CASTOR is being developed for the ALICE heavy ion experiment at the LHC and will probe the very forward pseudorapidity region 5.6 ≤ η ≤ 7.2, characterized by very high baryon density. CASTOR is optimised to search for Centauro signatures and long penetrating objects. Simulations show that CASTOR is well able to distinguish events with abnormal values of E em /E had or N γ /N ch . In addition simulations of the transition curves of Strangelets traversing the CASTOR calorimeter show long penetration and many-maxima structure such as observed in cosmic ray events.