Strangeness and Statistical Hadronization: How to Study Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

Statistical hadronization is presented as mechanism for (strange) particle production from a deconfined quark--gluon plasma (QGP) fireball. We first consider hadronic resonance production at RHIC as a test of the model. We present in detail how the hadrochemistry determines particle multiplicities and in case of sudden hadronization allows investigation of QGP properties. A comparative study of strange hadron production at SPS and RHIC is presented. The energy dependence of physical observables shows regularities and a potential discontinuity in the low RHIC range, when comparing these different energy domains. Considering the energy scan program at CERN-SPS we show that the K^+/π^+ discontinuity is a baryon density effect.

35 pages, 15 figures, presented at the Cracow School of Theoretical Physics, Zakopane, May 30 - June 8, 2003

References in corpus (1)

• Description of the particle ratios and transverse-momentum spectra for various centralities at RHIC in a single-freeze-out model

Cited by in corpus (8)

• SHARE: Statistical Hadronization with Resonances
• Hadron Production and Phase Changes in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• Particle yield fluctuations and chemical non-equilibrium at RHIC
• Strange Pentaquark Hadrons in Statistical Hadronization
• Hadron Liquid with a Small Baryon Chemical Potential at Finite Temperature
• Multiplicities and bulk thermodynamic quantities at \mathversion{bold}{$\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130$} GeV with SHARE
• Strangeness and the discovery of quark-gluon plasma
• Statistical hadronization phenomenology in heavy ion collisions at SPS and RHIC energies