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

We argue that the ratio S 3 = ΛH/( 3He × Λp ) 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 heavyion collision: 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.