The strange-quark chemical potential as an experimentally accessible 'order parameter' of the deconfinement phase transition for finite baryon density

We consider the change of the strange-quark chemical potential in the phase diagram of nuclear matter, employing the Wilson loop and scalar quark condensate order parameters, mass-scaled partition functions and enforcing flavour conservation. Assuming the region beyond the hadronic phase to be described by massive, correlated and interacting quarks, in the spirit of lattice and effective QCD calculations, we find the strange-quark chemical potential to change sign: from positive in the hadronic phase, to zero upon deconfinement, to negative in the partonic domain. We propose this change in the sign of the strange-quark chemical potential to be an experimentally accessible order parameter and a unique, concise and well-defined indication of the quark-deconfinement phase transition in nuclear matter.