We explore the dependence of the critical density , separating hadronic matter from a mixed phase of quarks and hadrons , on the ratio Z / A .
We use both the MIT bag model and the Color Dielectric Model to describe the quark dynamics , while for the hadronic phase we employ various relativistic equations of state .
We find that , if the parameters of quark models are fixed so that the existence of quark stars is allowed , then the critical density drops dramatically in the range Z / A \sim 0.3–0.4 .
Moreover , for Z / A \sim 0.3 the critical density is only slightly larger than the saturation density of symmetric nuclear-matter .
This opens the possibility to verify the Witten-Bodmer hypothesis on absolute stability of quark matter using ground-based experiments in which neutron-rich nuclei are tested .