Strangeness in strongly interacting matter

Abstract

This talk is devoted to review the field of strangeness production in (ultra-)relativistic heavy ion collisions within our present theoretical understanding. Historically there have been (at least) three major ideas for the interest in the production of strange hadronic particles: (1) mass modification of the kaons in a (baryon-)dense environment; (2) (early) K+ - production probes the nuclear equation of state (EoS); (3) enhanced strangeness production especially in the (multi-)strange (anti-)baryon channels as a signal of quark gluon plasma (QGP) formation. As a guideline for the discussion I employ the extensive experience with microscopic hadronic transport models. In addition, I elaborate on the recent idea of antihyperon production solely by means of multi-mesonic fusion-type reactions.

18 pages, 7 figures, uses iopams.sty; Invited opening talk at the 6th International Conference on Strange Quarks in Matter 2001 (SQM2001),Frankfurt, Germany, 25-29 Sep 2001; revised and accepted version for publication in Journal of Physics G

References in corpus (11)

• Maximum Relative Strangeness Content in Heavy Ion Collisions Around 30 A.GeV
• Strange hadrons and their resonances: a diagnostic tool of QGP freeze-out dynamics
• Antilambda production in Au+Au collisions at 11.7 A GeV/c
• Strangeness equilibration in heavy ion collisions
• Chiral SU(3) Symmetry and Strangeness
• Strangeness Production in Microscopic Transport Models
• The nuclear equation of state probed by $K^{+}$ production in heavy ion collisions
• A Microscopic Picture of Strangeness Production at the SPS
• Strangeness, Equilibration, Hadronization
• In-Medium Baryon Interactions and Hypernuclear Structure
• The Role of Strangeness in Astrophysics - an Odyssey through Strange Phases

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Particle ratios at RHIC: Effective hadron masses and chemical freeze-out
• The K/pi ratio from condensed Polyakov loops
• Dilepton production from hot hadronic matter in nonequilibrium
• Transient field fluctuations effects in d+Au and Au+Au collisions at \sqrt{s_nn} = 200 GeV
• Strong Color Field Baryonic Remnants in Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions at 200A GeV
• Canonical suppression in microscopic transport models
• Collective effects in microscopic transport models