Detectability of Strange Matter in Heavy Ion Experiments

We discuss the properties of two distinct forms of hypothetical strange matter, small lumps of strange quark matter (strangelets) and of hyperon matter (metastable exotic multihypernuclear objects: MEMOs), with special emphasis on their relevance for present and future heavy ion experiments. The masses of small strangelets up to A = 40 are calculated using the MIT bag model with shell mode filling for various bag parameters. The strangelets are checked for possible strong and weak hadronic decays, also taking into account multiple hadron decays. It is found that strangelets which are stable against strong decay are most likely highly negative charged, contrary to previous findings. Strangelets can be stable against weak hadronic decay but their masses and charges are still rather high. This has serious impact on the present high sensitivity searches in heavy ion experiments at the AGS and CERN facilities. On the other hand, highly charged MEMOs are predicted on the basis of an extended relativistic mean-field model. Those objects could be detected in future experiments searching for short-lived, rare composites. It is demonstrated that future experiments can be sensitive to a much wider variety of strangelets.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, uses RevTeX and epsf.st

Inclusive decays of B mesons to charmonium

We have used the CLEO-II detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ringe (CESR) to study the inclusive production of charmonium mesons in a sample of 2.15 million BB¯ events. We find inclusive branching fractions of (1.12±0.04±0.06)% for B→J/ψX, (0.34±0.04±0.03)% for B→ψ′X, and (0.40±0.06±0.04)% for B→χc1X. We also find some evidence for the inclusive production of χc2, and set an upper limit for the branching fraction of the inclusive decay B→ηcX of 0.9% at 90% confidence level. Momentum spectra for inclusive J/ψ, ψ′, and χc1 production are presented. These measurements are compared to theoretical calculations