Search for neutral strange quark matter in high energy heavy ion collisions

We present results of a search for neutral strange quark matter (strangelets) in 11.6A GeV/c Aut-Pb reactions from the 1995 run of experiment E864 at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. We have sampled approximately 1.3 billion 10% most central Au+Pb interactions and have observed no statistically significant signal for neutral strangelet states with baryon number in the range 620 GeV/c(2) These limits are the first limits reported on the production of heavy neutral strangelets. They complement searches for positively and negatively charged strangelets also conducted by our collaboration. We discuss the implications of these results on strangelet production mechanisms and the stability of strange quark matter. [S0556-2813(99)50504-9]

Search for charged strange quark matter produced in 11.5A GeV/c Au+Pb collisions

We present results of a search for strange quark matter (strangelets) in 11.5A GeV/c Au + Pb collisions from the 1994 and 1995 runs of experiment E864 at Brookhaven's Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. We observe no strangelet candidates and set a 90% confidence level upper limit of approximately 3 X 10(-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. [S0031-9007(97)04465-7]

A spectrometer for study of high mass objects created in relativistic heavy ion reactions

Experiment E864 at the Brookhaven AGS accelerator uses a high sensitivity, large acceptance spectrometer, designed to search for strangelets and other novel forms of matter produced in high-energy heavy ion collisions. The spectrometer has excellent acceptance and rate capabilities for measuring the production properties of known particles and nuclei such as (p) over bar, (d) over bar and He-6. The experiment uses a magnetic spectrometer and employs redundant time of flight and position detectors and a hadronic calorimeter. In this paper we describe the design and performance of the spectrometer. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved