Charge, strangeness and radius of strangelets

Abstract

We investigate, at both zero and finite temperatures, the properties of strangelets versus the electric charge Z and strangeness S. The strangelet radius is not a monotonic function of either charge or strangeness, and a minimum is reached in the (Z, S) plane. However, the thermodynamically stable strangelets do not correspond to the radius minimum. The minimum radius always appears at positive strangeness, while the stable radius may appear at negative strangeness for very small baryon numbers. For large baryon numbers, the stable radius is proportional to the cubic root of baryon numbers, but inversely proportional to the square root of the confinement parameter in the present model. If bulk strange quark matter is absolutely stable, the reduced size of strangelets is about 1 fm, which may be relevant for the analysis of the strangelet production and detection.