Searching for onset of deconfinement via hypernuclei and baryon-strangeness correlations

We argue that the ratio S3=HΛ3/(He3×Λp) is a good representation of the local correlation between baryon number and strangeness, and therefore is a valuable tool to probe the nature of the dense matter created in high energy heavy-ion collisions: quark gluon plasma or hadron gas. A multiphase transport model (AMPT) plus a dynamical coalescence model is used to elucidate our arguments. We find that AMPT with string melting predicts an increase of S3S3 with increasing beam energy, and is consistent with experimental data, while AMPT with only hadronic scattering results in a low S3S3 throughout the energy range from AGS to RHIC, and fails to describe the experimental data.