Negatively Charged Strangelet Search using the E864 Spectrometer at the AGS

TL;DR

This study searches for negatively charged strangelets in high-energy gold-platinum collisions using the E864 spectrometer, setting upper limits on their production due to no candidates being observed.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive upper limits on negatively charged strangelet production in heavy-ion collisions at AGS energies.

Findings

No strangelet candidates observed for charges Z=-1 and Z=-2.

Upper limits on strangelet production are approximately 1 x 10^{-8} and 4 x 10^{-9} per collision.

Limits are valid for stable or long-lived strangelets with lifetimes >50 ns.

Abstract

We provide a status report on the progress of searching for negatively charged strangelets using the E864 spectrometer at the AGS. About 200 million recorded events representing approximately 14 billion 10% central interactions of Au + Pt at 11.5 GeV/c taken during the 1996-1997 run of the experiment are used in the analysis. No strangelet candidates are seen for charges Z=-1 and Z=-2, corresponding to a 90% confidence level for upper limits of strangelet production of ~1 x 10^{-8} and ~4 x 10^{-9} per central collision respectively. The limits are nearly uniform over a wide range of masses and are valid only for strangelets which are stable or have lifetimes greater than ~50 ns.