Strangeness Enhancement and Canonical Suppression

Abstract

We demonstrate the essential role of canonical suppression in strangeness enhancement. The pattern of enhancement of strange and multistrange baryons observed by the WA97 collaboration can be understood on this basis. Besides, it is shown that in canonical approach strangeness enhancement is a decreasing function of collision energy. It is the largest at $\sqrt{s}=8.7$ GeV where the enhancement of $\Omega ,\Xi$ and $\Lambda$ is of the order of 100, 20 and 3 respectively.

6 pages, 6 figures