On local and global equilibrium in heavy ion collisions

The thermal model is commonly used in two different ways for the description of hadron production in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collision. One is the application of the thermal model to 4pi integrated data and the other is the thermal description of central dN/dy ratios. While the first method implicitly assumes global equilibrium the other scenario assumes Bjorken scaling within the investigated rapidity range. Both assumptions are only approximations for real physical collision systems. We study the impact of both approximations for the extraction of thermal parameters on the exemplary case of S+S collisions at SPS energies. The particle distributions are modeled by a hydrodynamical description of the relevant collision system.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures included, uses REVTE

Dependence of lepton pair emission on EoS and initial state

We present results from a hydrodynamic calculation for thermal emission of lepton pairs in central lead-lead collisions at the CERN SPS energy. Dependence of the emission on the initial conditions and Equation of State (EoS) is considered and the spectra are compared with CERES data and calculated distribution of Drell--Yan pairs.Comment: 4 pages, includes 4 ps-figures, talk at Quark Matter'97, Tsukuba, Japa

On chemical equilibrium in nuclear collisions

The data on average hadron multiplicities in central A+A collisions measured at CERN SPS are analysed with the ideal hadron gas model. It is shown that the full chemical equilibrium version of the model fails to describe the experimental results. The agreement of the data with the off-equilibrium version allowing for partial strangeness saturation is significantly better. The freeze-out temperature of about 180 MeV seems to be independent of the system size (from S+S to Pb+Pb) and in agreement with that extracted in e+e-, pp and p{\bar p} collisions. The strangeness suppression is discussed at both hadron and valence quark level. It is found that the hadronic strangeness saturation factor gamma_S increases from about 0.45 for pp interactions to about 0.7 for central A+A collisions with no significant change from S+S to Pb+Pb collisions. The quark strangeness suppression factor lambda_S is found to be about 0.2 for elementary collisions and about 0.4 for heavy ion collisions independently of collision energy and type of colliding syste

Mass number scaling in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions from a hydrodynamical approach

We study the different nucleus-nucleus collisions, O+Au, S+S, S+Ag, S+Au and Pb+Pb, at the CERN-SPS energy in a one-fluid hydrodynamical approach using a parametrization based on baryon stopping in terms of the thickness of colliding nuclei. Good agreement with measured particle spectra is achieved. We deduce the mass number scaling behaviour of the initial energy density. We find that the equilibration time is nearly independent of the size of the colliding nuclei.Comment: 27 pages, figures included, submitted to European Physical Journa

Strange Messages: Chemical and Thermal Freeze-out in Nuclear Collisions

Thermal models are commonly used to interpret heavy-ion data on particle yields and spectra and to extract the conditions of chemical and thermal freeze-out in heavy-ion collisions. I discuss the usefulness and limitations of such thermal model analyses and review the experimental and theoretical evidence for thermalization in nuclear collisions. The crucial role of correlating strangeness production data with single particle spectra and two-particle correlation measurements is pointed out. A consistent dynamical picture for the heavy-ion data from the CERN SPS involves an initial prehadronic stage with deconfined color and with an appreciable isotropic pressure component. This requires an early onset of thermalization.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, talk given at Strange Quark Matter '98, Padova, Italy, 20-24 July 1998, to be published in J. Phys. G 25; final version with updated reference

Hydrodynamic simulation of elliptic flow

We use a hydrodynamic model to study the space-time evolution transverse to the beam direction in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions with nonzero impact parameters. We focus on the influence of early pressure on the development of radial and elliptic flow. We show that at high energies elliptic flow is generated only during the initial stages of the expansion while radial flow continues to grow until freeze-out. Quantitative comparisons with SPS data from semiperipheral Pb+Pb collisions suggest the applicability of hydrodynamical concepts already $\approx$ 1 fm/c after impact.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, proceedings for Quark Matter 9

Unified Description of Freeze-Out Parameters in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

It is shown that the chemical freeze-out parameters obtained at CERN/SPS, BNL/AGS and GSI/SIS energies all correspond to a unique value of 1 GeV per hadron in the local rest frame of the system, independent of the beam energy and of the target and beam particles.Comment: revtex, 1 figur

Rapidity Dependence of Strange Particle Ratios in Nuclear Collisions

It was recently found that in sulphur-induced nuclear collisions at 200 A GeV the observed strange hadron abundances can be explained within a thermodynamic model where baryons and mesons separately are in a state of relative chemical equilibrium, with overall strangeness being slightly undersaturated, but distributed among the strange hadron channels according to relative chemical equilibrium with a vanishing strange quark chemical potential. We develop a consistent thermodynamic formulation of the concept of relative chemical equilibrium and show how to introduce into the partition function deviations from absolute chemical equilibrium, e.~g.~an undersaturation of overall strangeness or the breaking of chemical equilibrium between mesons and baryons. We then proceed to test on the available data the hypothesis that the strange quark chemical potential vanishes everywhere, and that the rapidity distributions of all the observed hadrons can be explained in terms of one common, rapidity-dependent function $\mu_{\rm q}(\eta)$ for the baryon chemical potential only. The aim of this study is to shed light on the observed strong rapidity dependence of the strange baryon ratios in the NA36 experiment.Comment: uses REVTeX, 14 pages, 17 ps-figures (uuencoded) added with figures comman

Entropy production by resonance decays

We investigate entropy production for an expanding system of particles and resonances with isospin symmetry -- in our case pions and $\rho$ mesons -- within the framework of relativistic kinetic theory. A cascade code to simulate the kinetic equations is developed and results for entropy production and particle spectra are presented.Comment: 17 pages, 10 ps-figures included, only change: preprint number adde