Thermal hadron production in pp and p{\bar p} collisions

It is shown that the hadron production in high energy pp and p{\bar p} collisions, calculated by assuming that particles originate in hadron gas fireballs at thermal and partial chemical equilibrium, agrees very well with the data. The temperature of the hadron gas fireballs, determined by fitting hadron abundances, does not seem to depend on the centre of mass energy, having a nearly constant value of about 170 MeV. This value is in agreement with that obtained in e^+e^- collisions and supports a universal hadronization mechanism in all kinds of reactions consisting in a parton-hadron transition at critical values of temperature and pressure.Comment: 41 pages, 11 .eps figures, published in Z. Phys. C Revision - Corrections of two formulae in Sect.

What is the meaning of the statistical hadronization model?

The statistical model of hadronization succeeds in reproducing particle abundances and transverse momentum spectra in high energy collisions of elementary particles as well as of heavy ions. Despite its apparent success, the interpretation of these results is controversial and the validity of the approach very often questioned. In this paper, we would like to summarize the whole issue by first outlining a basic formulation of the model and then comment on the main criticisms and different kinds of interpretations, with special emphasis on the so-called "phase space dominance". While the ultimate answer to the question why the statistical model works should certainly be pursued, we stress that it is a priority to confirm or disprove the fundamental scheme of the statistical model by performing some detailed tests on the rates of exclusive channels at lower energy.Comment: 14 pages, to be published in the Proceedings of the International workshop "Focus on multiplicity", Bari (Italy) June 17-19 200

Universal Pion Freeze-out Phase-Space Density

Results on the pion freeze-out phase-space density in sulphur-nucleus, Pb-Pb and pion-proton collisions at CERN-SPS are presented. All heavy-ion reactions are consistent with the thermal Bose-Einstein distrtibution f=1/(exp(E/T)-1) at T~120 MeV, modified for expansion. Pion-proton data are also consistent with f, but at T~180 MeV.Comment: 1 page, 1 figure; 98' report for GSI-Darmstad

Strange quark production in a statistical effective model

An effective model with constituent quarks as fundamental degrees of freedom is used to predict the relative strangeness production pattern in both high energy elementary and heavy ion collisions. The basic picture is that of the statistical hadronization model, with hadronizing color-singlet clusters assumed to be at full chemical equilibrium at constituent quark level. Thus, by assuming that at least the ratio between strange and non-strange constituent quarks survives in the final hadrons, the apparent undersaturation of strange particle phase space observed in the data can be accounted for. In this framework, the enhancement of relative strangeness production in heavy ion collisions in comparison with elementary collisions is mainly owing to the excess of initial non-strange matter over antimatter and the so-called canonical suppression, namely the constraint of exact color and flavor conservation over small volumes.Comment: 22 pages, 9 postscript figures, slightly shortened version published in Phys. Rev.

Statistical hadronization with exclusive channels in e+e- annihilation

We perform a systematic analysis of exclusive hadronic channels in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies between 2.1 and 2.6 GeV within the statistical hadronization model. Because of the low multiplicities involved, calculations have been carried out in the full microcanonical ensemble, including conservation of energy-momentum, angular momentum, parity, isospin, and all relevant charges. We show that the data is in an overall good agreement with the model for an energy density of about 0.5 GeV/fm^3 and an extra strangeness suppression parameter gamma_S ~ 0.7, essentially the same values found with fits to inclusive multiplicities at higher energy.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figure

Antihyperon-Production in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collision

Recently it has been shown that the observed antiproton yield in heavy-ion collisions at CERN-SpS energies can be understood by multi-pionic interactions which enforce local chemical equilibrium of the antiprotons with the nucleons and pions. Here we show that antihyperons are driven towards local chemical equilibrium with pions, nucleons and kaons on a timescale of less than 3 fm/c when applying a similar argument for the antihyperons by considering the inverse channel of annihilation reactions anti-Y + p to pions + kaons. These multi-mesonic reactions easily explain the antihyperon yields at CERN-SpS energies as advertised in pure thermal, hadronic models without the need of a quark gluon plasma phase. In addition, the argument also applies for AGS energies.Comment: 4 pages using RevTeX, 1 eps figur

Fluctuations of particle ratios and the abundance of hadronic resonances

In this letter we will argue that the event-by-event fluctuations of the ratio of positively over negatively charged pions provides a measurements of the number of rho and omega mesons right after hadronization. This finding can be utilized to put the hypothesis of chemical equilibration in relativistic heavy ion collisions to a test.Comment: 4 pages. No figure. Uses revtex with prl, aps, and multicol style

Status of Chemical Equilibrium in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Recent work on chemical equilibrium in heavy ion collisions is reviewed. The energy dependence of thermal parameters is discussed. The centrality dependence of thermal parameters at SPS energies is presented.Comment: 7 pages, 7 Postscript figure

Overpopulation of Ωˉ\bar \Omega in pp collisions: a way to distinguish statistical hadronization from string dynamics

The $\bar{\Omega}/\Omega$ ratio originating from string decays is predicted to be larger than unity in proton proton interactions at SPS energies ($E_{\rm lab}$=160 GeV). The anti-omega dominance increases with decreasing beam energy. This surprising behavior is caused by the combinatorics of quark-antiquark production in small and low-mass strings. Since this behavior is not found in a statistical description of hadron production in proton proton collisions, it may serve as a key observable to probe the hadronization mechanism in such collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Is Strangeness still interesting at RHIC ?

With the advent of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Heavy Ion Physics will enter a new energy regime. The question is whether the signatures proposed for the discovery of a phase transition from hadronic matter to a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), that were established on the basis of collisions at the BEVALAC, the AGS, and the SPS, respectively, are still useful and detectable at these high incident energies. In the past two decades, measurements related to strangeness formation in the collision were advocated as potential signatures and were tested in numerous fixed target experiments at the AGS and the SPS. In this article I will review the capabilities of the RHIC detectors to measure various aspects of strangeness, and I will try to answer the question whether the information content of those measurements is comparable to the one at lower energies.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, Invited Talk at the IV International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter, Padova (Italy), July 20-24, 199