E864 is designed to be sensitive to many of the speculative new composite states, and thus can detect particles with positive, negative, or zero charge.
The range of charge-to-mass ratio covered will be large, from 
during the negative-particle search
to 
in the positive-charge
search. E864 will further be sensitive to particle production within about 1
unit of the center-of-mass rapidity, since almost all production models
indicate that composite-object production will be peaked at the center-of-mass
rapidity.
E864 will be capable of detecting particle states with proper lifetimes
50 ns or longer, while the sensitivity for shorter lifetimes will be
compromised due to decay losses. This allows for detection of most
metastable strangelet states. For example, strangelets undergoing most weak
decays will have lifetimes between about 
and 
sec [2]. There is a possibility, currently under investigation,
that particles decaying after the magnets could be identified in the E864
spectrometer as well. If feasible, this would extend our sensitivity to
proper times of order 10 ns. Experiments for particles with shorter
lifetimes, typical of hyperon decays, would be interesting but would require a
completely different experimental approach.
E864 is designed to use the heaviest ions provided by the
AGS, specifically the 
Au beam (which should become available for physics
experiments in the winter of 1993). Using this beam in conjunction with heavy
targets, such as Pb or Au, will create final states with the most extreme
conditions and greatest density of strangeness and baryon number.
Finally, E864 will study the production of a wide variety of known nuclear
states which are expected to be produced in these collisions. These include
both known light nuclei up to 
, and antinuclei through A=-3.
These states are likely produced by the coalescence mechanism, which has
proven to be an accurate production model at BEVALAC energies. Their
production properties are of considerable interest in understanding the
dynamics of the collisions, and they provide essential data for the
interpretation of any negative results found in the searches. For example, it
is possible to relate the coalescence production rates of strangelets to those
for the light nuclei in a fairly model-independent manner. Thus it will be
possible to interpret negative results in terms of a range of excluded
strangelet parameters. Similar analyses are possible for other proposed
multistrange baryonic systems.