Formation of Centauro in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC and their detection with the CASTOR detector of CMS

We present a phenomenological model describing the formation of a Deconfined Quark Matter fireball in the very forward, baryon-rich rapidity region in nucleus-nucleus interactions, and its subsequent decay into baryons and possibly strangelets. The model explains the centauro events observed in cosmic ray data and the long-penetrating component frequently accompanying them, and makes predictions for the LHC. We describe the CASTOR calorimeter, a subdetector under consideration at the CMS experiment, to probe the very forward, baryon-rich rapidity region in Pb + Pb collisions at the LHC. The simulated response of the calorimeter to new effects is presented and its sensitivity is derived using a neural network technique.