Strange hadron matter and SU(3) symmetry

Abstract

We calculate saturation curves for strange hadron matter using recently constructed baryon-baryon potentials which are constrained by SU(3) symmetry. All possible interaction channels within the baryon octet (consisting of $N$, $\Lambda$, $\Sigma$, and $\Xi$) are considered. It is found that a small $\Lambda$ fraction in nuclear matter slightly increases binding, but that larger fractions ($>10$) rapidly cause a decrease. Charge-neutral $N,\Lambda ,\Xi$ systems, with equal densities for nucleons and cascades, are only very weakly bound. The dependence of the binding energies on the strangeness per baryon, $f_s$, is predicted for various $N,\Lambda ,\Xi$ and $N,\Lambda ,\Sigma ,\Xi$ systems. The implications of our results in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and the core of a dense star are discussed. We also discuss the differences between our results and previous hadron matter calculations.

Comments: 14 pages RevTeX, 7 postscript figures