Canonical aspects of strangeness enhancement

Abstract

Strangeness enhancement (SE) in heavy ion collisions can be understood in the statistical model on the basis of canonical suppression. In this formulation,SE is a consequence of the transition from canonical to the asymptotic grand canonical limit and is predicted to be a decreasing function of collision energy. This model predictions are consistent with the recent NA49 data on $\Lambda$ enhancement at $p_{lab}=40, 80, 158$ GeV.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the proceedings of Quark Matter 2002 (Nantes, France