We provide a status report on the progress of searching for negatively charged strangelets using the E864 spectrometer at the AGS. About 200 million recorded events representing approximately 14 billion 10% central interactions of Au + Pt at 11.5 GeV/c taken during the 1996-1997 run of the experiment are used in the analysis. No strangelet candidates are seen for charges Z=-1 and Z=-2, corresponding to a 90% confidence level for upper limits of strangelet production of ~1 x 10^{ -8} and ~4 x 10^{ -9} per central collision respectively. The limits are nearly uniform over a wide range of masses and are valid only for strangelets which are stable or have lifetimes greater than ~50 ns.
Categories: hep-ex nucl-ex