Strange Particle Freeze-Out.pdfVIP

a r X i v : h e p - p h / 9 7 1 1 3 4 4 v 2 2 1 N o v 1 9 9 7 STRANGE PARTICLE FREEZE-OUT Jean Letessier1, Johann Rafelski1,2 and Ahmed Tounsi1 1 Laboratoire de Physique The?orique et Hautes Energies?, Paris 2 Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 PAR/LPTHE/93–54 November 1993 Published in Phys. Lett. B 321 (1994) 394. Abstract We reconsider thermal conditions of the central fireball presumed to be the source of abundantly produced strange (anti-)baryons in S → W collisions at 200 GeV A. We show that it is possible to completely fix the freeze-out temperature of strange particles in terms of the central rapidity kaon to Lambda particle abundance ratio at fixed, high transverse mass using a non-equilibrium hadronization model and the measured quark fugacities. Kinetic strange particle production models [1] imply that abundant strangeness is suggestive of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Even more specific information about the nature of the dense matter formed in relativistic nuclear collisions can be obtained considering strange quark and anti-quark clusters, since they are more sensitive to the environment from which they emerge [2]. Recently, the relative abundances of strange and multi-strange baryons and anti-baryons where studied experimentally [3, 4]. It has been suggested that the observed particle abundances are in agreement with a picture of explosively disintegrating QGP fireball [6]. This postulate was supported by the observation that details of the produced particle multiplicity point to a high entropy primordial phase [7], and by a comprehensive analysis of the data which concluded that the hadron gas (HG) model cannot be brought into consistency with the experimental results [8]. On the other hand, the alternative has been discussed [9, 10, 11] that the early experi- mental results [3], are compatible with the simplest possible scenario of an equilibrium, no flow, HG fireball being the particle source at which time it was no