Probing strangeness hadronization with event-by-event production of multistrange hadrons

Abstract

This Letter presents the first measurement of event-by-event fluctuations of the net number (difference between the particle and antiparticle multiplicities) of multistrange hadrons $\hat{I}{ž}^{-}$ and $\overline{\hat{I}}{ž}^{+}$ and its correlation with the net-kaon number using the data collected by the ALICE Collaboration in pp, p$-$Pb, and Pb$-$Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02\mathrm{TeV}$. The statistical hadronization model with a correlation over three units of rapidity between hadrons having the same and opposite strangeness content successfully describes the results. On the other hand, string-fragmentation models that mainly correlate strange hadrons with opposite strange quark content over a small rapidity range fail to describe the data.

20 pages, 3 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 14, published version, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/10997