Strangelet search and particle production studies in Pb-Pb collisions at 158·A GeV/c with the H6 beamline spectrometer at CERN

The charged particle beamline simulation program DECAY TURTLE (Trace Unlimited Rays Through Lumped Elements) has been modified to enable simulation of dipole magnet steering effects and simulation of hadronic interactions. These modifications together with the implementation of the measured misalignments of the magnetic elements of the H6 beamline at the CERN North Area and implementation of more accurate magnet apertures have been shown to allow a realistic simulation to be made of the complex 524 m long H6 beamline spectrometer used by NA52. The acceptance of the H6 beamline spectrometer has been computed using this modified version of DECAY TURTLE. Using these results better determined invariant differential production cross sections have been computed from the NA52 1994-1995 data, with improved error estimates. New limits for strangelet production in lead-lead collisions at 158.A GeV/c have been computed from the NA52 measurements from 1994-1995. The methods and results presented in this work can be applied to experiments using similar secondary beamlines as H6, like most of the SPS secondary beamlines at CERN.