STABILITY OF VERY SMALL STRANGELETS

We study the stability of small strangelets by employing a simple mode l of strange matter as a gas of noninteracting fermions confined in a bag. We solve the Dirac equation and populate the energy levels of the bag one quark at a time. We find that for system parameters such that strange matter is unbound in bulk, there may still exist strangelets with A < 100 that are metastable. We cannot determine, however, whethe r the lifetime of these strangelets is sufficient to detect them in cu rrent accelerator experiments.