Why does the thermal model for hadron production in heavy ion collisions work?

Abstract

The yields for hadrons and even light nuclei measured at midrapidity in relativistic heavy ion collisions are found to be dictated exclusively by their thermal Boltzmann factor for a common temperature of approximately 155 MeV. The reason for the validity of the thermal model description is widely discussed. Here, we offer a new type of argument in its favor.

References in corpus (3)

• Horizon formation and far-from-equilibrium isotropization in supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma
• Thermalization of Strongly Coupled Field Theories
• Hadron yields, the chemical freeze-out and the QCD phase diagram