Search for charged strange quark matter produced in 11.5A GeV/c Au+Pb collisions
/ Authors
E864 Collaboration T.A.Armstrong, K.N.Barish, S.J.Bennett, A.Chikanian, S.D.Coe, T.M.Cormier, R.Davies, G.DeCataldo, P.Dee, G.E.Diebold
and 44 more authors
C.B.Dover, P.Fachini, L.E.Finch, N.K.George, N.Giglietto, S.V.Greene, P.Haridas, J.C.Hill, A.S.Hirsch, R.A.Hoversten, H.Z.Huang, B.Kim, B.S.Kumar, T.Lainis, J.G.Lajoie, R.A.Lewis, Q.Li, B.Libby, R.D.Majka, M.G.Munhoz, J.L.Nagle, I.A.Pless, J.K.Pope, N.T.Porile, C.A.Pruneau, M.S.Z.Rabin, A.Raino, J.D.Reid, A.Rimai, F.S.Rotondo, J.Sandweiss, R.P.Scharenberg, A.J.Slaughter, G.A.Smith, P.Spinelli, B.K.Srivastava, M.L.Tincknell, W.S.Toothacker, G. Buren, W.K.Wilson, F.K.Wohn, E.J.Wolin, Z.Xu, K.Zhao
/ Abstract
We present results of a search for strange quark matter (strangelets) in 11.5 A GeV/c Au+Pb collisions from the 1994 and 1995 runs of experiment E864 at Brookhaven's AGS. We observe no strangelet candidates and set a 90% confidence level upper limit of approximately 3x10**-8 per 10% central interaction for the production of |Z|=1 and |Z|=2 strangelets over a large mass range and with metastable lifetimes of about 50 ns or more. These results place constraints primarily on quark-gluon plasma based production models for strangelets.
Journal: Physical Review Letters