Separation of strangeness from antistrangeness in the phase transition from quark to hadron matter: Possible formation of strange quark matter in heavy-ion collisions
Abstract
We present a mechanism for the separation of strangeness from antistrangeness in the deconfinement transition. For a net strangeness of zero in the total system, the population of s quarks is greatly enriched in the quark-gluon plasma, while the s¯ quarks drift into the hadronic phase. This separation could result in ``strangelet'' formation, i.e., metastable blobs of strange-quark matter, which could serve as a unique signature for quark-gluon plasma formation in heavy-ion collisions.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- May 1987
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.58.1825
- Bibcode:
- 1987PhRvL..58.1825G
- Keywords:
-
- Hadrons;
- Heavy Ions;
- Particle Collisions;
- Particle Theory;
- Quarks;
- Strangeness;
- Gluons;
- Plasma Physics;
- Nuclear and High-Energy Physics;
- 25.70.Np;
- 12.38.Mh;
- Quark-gluon plasma