A scenario of heavy resonances, called massive Hagedorn states, is proposed
which exhibits a fast (t≈1 fm/c) chemical equilibration of (strange)
baryons and anti-baryons at the QCD critical temperature Tc. For
relativistic heavy ion collisions this scenario predicts that hadronization is
followed by a brief expansion phase during which the equilibration rate is
higher than the expansion rate, so that baryons and antibaryons reach chemical
equilibrium before chemical freeze-out occurs.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Invited talk given at 8th International
Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter (SQM2004), Cape Town, South Africa,
15-20 September 200