CASTOR: Centauro And STrange Object Research in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC

We present a phenomenological model which describes the formation of a Centauro fireball in the baryon-rich projectile fragmentation region in nucleus-nucleus interactions in the upper atmosphere and at the LHC, and its decay to non-strange baryons and Strangelets. Strangelets are assimilated to the "strongly penetrating component" frequently observed accompanying hadron-rich cosmic ray events. We describe the CASTOR subdetector for the ALICE experiment at the LHC. CASTOR will probe, in an event-by-event mode, the very forward, baryon-rich phase space 5.6< eta <7.2 in 5.5*A TeV central Pb+Pb collisions. It will look for events with pronounced imbalance between hadronic and photonic content and for deeply penetrating objects. We present results of simulations for the response of the CASTOR calorimeter to the passage of Strangelets. (15 refs).