Universal chemical freeze-out as a phase transition signature

Abstract

It is shown that kinetic freeze-out in relativistic heavy-ion collisions invariably entails a non-trivial dependence of the freeze-out temperature on the collision centrality. The centrality independence of the chemical freeze-out temperature observed in Au+Au collisions at RHIC is therefore inconsistent with the hypothesis that hadron abundances decouple kinetically from inelastic hadron-hadron interactions. On the other hand, it is consistent with the hypothesis that chemical decoupling is driven by the quark-hadron phase transition, and that the observed universal chemical freeze-out reflects its critical temperature, independent of the dynamical state of the collision fireball as it passes through the phase transition.

arXiv comment16 pages, 4 figures. Talk given at the International Workshop on "Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement", July 3-6, 2006, Galileo Galilei Institute, Florence, Italy. To appear in Proceedings of Science

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• A comparative analysis of statistical hadron production
• Strangeness production from SPS to LHC
• Causal Viscous Hydrodynamics for Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• Jozso's Legacy: Chemical and Kinetic Freeze-out in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Chemical Equilibration and Transport Properties of Hadronic Matter near $T_c$
• Hagedorn States and Thermalization in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Pion freeze-out through HBT correlation in HICs from AGS/FAIR to RHIC energies