Color Singlet Strangelets

Abstract

When considering strangelets at finite temperature it is important to obey the constraint that any observed state must be color singlet. This constraint results in an increase in strangelet masses as calculated at fixed entropy per baryon. We use the color singlet partition function for an MIT bag, derived using the group theoretical projection method, to calculate strangelet masses. Mean shell effects are included in a liquid drop model, by using a density of states obtained from the multiple reflection expansion. Another important effect of the color singlet restriction, namely many orders of magnitude suppression of thermal nucleation of quark-gluon plasma in collisions, will also briefly be described.