First search for positive strangelets with the E864 spectrometer

The first search for strangelets conducted by experiment BNL-E864 is presented [1]. The analysis uses over 26.5 million “central” events recorded for the “positive strangelet” search from the first (Fall 1994) run of the experiment. The full apparatus was not installed for this run, but the tracking portion of the apparatus which was present for the 1994 run performed to the expectations of our proposal. We observed 25 Z=1 high mass candidates in a mass range of 10 GeV to 200 GeV. The number and character of observed high mass candidates are consistent with background expected from Monte Carlo programs for the 1994 configuration of the detector, and thus limits are placed on strangelet production. The results place a significant limit on the existence of high mass strangelets.