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

We argue that the ratio S-3 = H-3(Lambda)/(He-3 x Lambda/p) 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 S-3 with increasing beam energy, and is consistent with experimental data, while AMPT with only hadronic scattering results in a low S-3 throughout the energy range from AGS to RHIC, and fails to describe the experimental data. Published by Elsevier B.V.