Searching for Strange Quark Matter with the CMS/CASTOR Detector at the LHC

CASTOR is a novel tungsten/quartz EM and HAD calorimeter, specially designed for the study of “long-penetrating hadrons”, observed in hadron-rich Cosmic-Ray events and suggested to be Strangelets. Strangelets are proposed to be formed in the baryon-rich, very forward fragmentation region, through the creation of deconfined quark matter in ultra-relativistic A + A collisions at the LHC. Such objects, if they exist, should be detected and identified in the 10.3λI calorimeter by their azimuthal asymmetry in energy deposition and their large magnitude of fluctuations in the transition curves, as compared to normal events. We briefly present the calorimeter and discuss the MC simulations for the identification of Strangelets.