Production of metastable strange‐quark droplets in relativistic heavy‐ion collisions

Of enormous consequence is the theoretical possibility that not only may multiquark S droplets with large strangeness be metastable, but large extended S matter might be absolutely stable. If indeed, the energy/baryon <938 MeV for S matter, then this would provide the ultimate energy source. Thus the detection of the metastable S droplets in relativistic heavy‐ion collisions would be of great interest. We have calculated the production probability of S droplets in heavy‐ion collisions by fragmentation of quarks following formation of hot quark‐gluon droplets. We proposed a very sensitive detection scheme (for the present fixed target heavy‐ion BNL and CERN facilities) in which an S droplet interacts in a secondary target to produce many Λ’s, a striking, readily identified signature. Here, we also discuss detectable consequences of neutron stars being S matter with essentially no crust, in particular, the possibility of a pulsed νe flux from fast pulsars.