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Strange Hadron Resonances: Freeze-Out Probes in Heavy-Ion Collisions

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 Added by Johann Rafelski
 Publication date 2002
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and research's language is English




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Hyperon resonances are becoming an extremely useful tool allowing the study of the properties of hadronic fireballs made in heavy ion collisions. Their yield, compared to stable particles with the same quark composition, depends on hadronization conditions. The resonances short lifetime makes them ideal probes of the fireball chemical freeze-out mechanisms. An analysis of resonance abundance in heavy ion collisions should be capable of distinguishing between possible hadronization scenarios, in particular between sudden and gradual hadronization. In this paper, we review the existing SPS and RHIC experimental data on resonance production in heavy ion collisions, and discuss in terms of both thermal and microscopic models the yields of the two observed resonances, K* and Lambda(1520). We show how freeze-out properties, namely chemical freeze-out temperature and the lifetime of the interacting hadron phase which follows, can be related to resonance yields. Finally, we apply these methods to SPS and RHIC measurements, discuss the significance and interpretations of our findings, and suggest further measurements which may help in clarifying existing ambiguities.



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76 - G. Torrieri 2001
We describe how the abundance and distribution of hyperon resonances can be used to probe freeze-out conditions. We demonstrate that resonance yields allow us to measure the time scales of chemical and thermal freeze-outs. This should permit a direct differentiation between the explosive sudden, and staged adiabatic freeze-out scenarios.
High energy heavy-ion collisions in laboratory produce a form of matter that can test Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, at high temperatures. One of the exciting possibilities is the existence of thermodynamically distinct states of QCD, particularly a phase of de-confined quarks and gluons. An important step in establishing this new state of QCD is to demonstrate that the system has attained thermal equilibrium. We present a test of thermal equilibrium by checking that the mean hadron yields produced in the small impact parameter collisions as well as grand canonical fluctuations of conserved quantities give consistent temperature and baryon chemical potential for the last scattering surface. This consistency for moments up to third order of the net-baryon number, charge, and strangeness is a key step in the proof that the QCD matter produced in heavy-ion collision attains thermal equilibrium. It is a clear indication for the first time, using fluctuation observables, that a femto-scale system attains thermalization. The study also indicates that the relaxation time scales for the system are comparable to or smaller than the life time of the fireball.
For beam energies from SPS to RHIC, the transverse energy per charged particle, $E_T/N_{textrm{ch}}$, saturates at a value of approximately 0.8 GeV. A direct connection between this value and the freeze-out criterium $E/N approx 1$ GeV for the primordial energy and particle number in the hadronic resonance gas model is established.
Relative hadron abundances from high-energy heavy-ion collisions reveal substantial inhomogeneities of temperature and baryon-chemical potential within the decoupling volume. The freeze-out volume is not perfectly stirred, i.e. the concentrations of pions, kaons, (anti-) nucleons etc are inhomogeneous. Such inhomogeneities in the late stages of the hydrodynamic expansion might be traces of a first-order phase transition.
We study chemical freeze-out parameters for heavy-ion collisions by performing two different thermal analyses. We analyze results from thermal fits for particle yields, as well as, net-charge fluctuations in order to characterize the chemical freeze-out. The Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model is employed for both methods. By separating the light hadrons from the strange hadrons in thermal fits, we study the proposed flavor hierarchy. For the net-charge fluctuations, we calculate the mean-over-variance ratio of the net-kaon fluctuations in the HRG model at the five highest energies of the RHIC Beam Energy Scan (BES) for different particle data lists. We compare these results with recent experimental data from the STAR collaboration in order to extract sets of chemical freeze-out parameters for each list. We focused on particle lists which differ largely in the number of resonant states. By doing so, our analysis determines the effect of the amount of resonances included in the HRG model on the freeze-out conditions. Our findings have potential impact on various other models in the field of relativistic heavy-ion collisions.
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