Abstract
Strangelets can be considered to be a low baryon number (A) example of strange quark matter (SQM), in which up, down, and strange quarks are confined in a single bag rather than as individual protons, neutrons, lambdas, or other baryons1–4. It has been hypothesized that SQM may in fact be the true ground state of nuclear matter5, that neutron stars may be strange stars5, and that cosmic rays may have a SQM component6. Even if SQM is only metastable, with an energy per baryon number between that of nuclei and the mass of the lambda, it is possible for SQM to form by the decay of hypernuclei or multi-hypernuclei7,8 or even to be formed directly in heavy-ion induced reactions9–12. Only if the energy per baryon number of SQM is greater than the mass of the lambda does SQM’s hypothesized existence make no sense.KeywordsNeutron StarBaryon NumberStrange QuarkNuclear ChargeStrange Stars5These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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