Particle Ratios at CERN, BNL and GSI : Unified Description of Freeze-Out Parameters

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 for the average energy per hadron.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Postscript figures, uses espcrc1.sty

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

Van der Waals Excluded Volume Model of Multicomponent Hadron Gas

A generalization of the Van der Waals excluded volume procedure for the multicomponent hadron gas is proposed. The derivation is based on the grand canonical partition function for the system of particles of several species interacting by hard core potentials. The obtained formulae for thermodynamical quantities are consistent with underlying principles of statistical mechanics as well as with thermodynamical identities. The model can be applied to the analysis of experimental data for particle number ratios in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions.Comment: 8 page