DISTILLATION AND SURVIVAL OF STRANGE-QUARK-MATTER DROPLETS IN ULTRARELATIVISTIC HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

Recently it has been suggested that rather cold droplets of absolutely stable or metastable strange-quark matter may be distilled in heavy-ion collisions during the phase transition from a baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma (QGP) to hadron matter. Here we present a model describing the hadronization of the QGP through particle emission, which is based solely on thermodynamical arguments. Pions and K+'s and K0's carry away entropy and antistrangeness from the system, thus facilitating the cooling process and the strangelet formation. Our results are supported by revised more sophisticated rate calculations. Two rather unexpected results are obtained when this model is applied to the investigation of strangelet production. The strangeness separation mechanism and the formation process works well even for higher initial entropies per baryon, tantamount to higher bombarding energies. The surviving strangelets have a rather high strangeness content, f(s) approximately 1.2-2 [i.e., Z/A approximately (-0.1)-(-0.5)]. Hence droplets of strange-quark matter with a baryon number of approximately 10-30 and with a negative charge may be produced. They may serve as a unique signature for the transient formation of a quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions.