Neutrino sparking and the neutron -> strange stars conversion - art. no. 023003.

We address the production of strangelets inside neutron stars by means of h igh-energy neutrino interactions (sparking). Requiring that neutron stars r emain as such along their lifetimes, we obtain a bound on the probability o f a strangelet in the final state and compare it with existing laboratory l imits. It turns out that this mechanism is not likely to drive a neutron--> strange stars conversion for realistic values of the minimum center-mass-en ergy necessary to produce the quark-gluon plasma, a necessary precondition for the formation of the strangelet. [S0556-2821(99)01602-1].