SQM studied in the Field Correlator Method

By using the recent nonperturbative equation of state of the quark–gluon plasma derived in the formalism of the Field Correlator Method, we investigate the bulk properties of the strange quark matter in β-equilibrium and with charge neutrality at image. The results show that the stability of strange quark matter with respect to image is strongly dependent on the model parameters, namely, the gluon condensate image and the image interaction potential image. A remarkable result is that the width of the stability window decreases as image increases, being maximum at image and nearly zero at image. For image in the range image, all values of image are lower than image obtained from comparison with lattice data at image. Our results do not favor the possibilities for the existence of (either nonnegative or negative) absolutely stable strange quark matter.