Chemical Freeze-out of Strange Particles and Possible Root of Strangeness Suppression

Abstract

Two approaches to treat the chemical freeze-out of strange particles in hadron resonance gas model are analyzed. The first one employs their non-equillibration via the usual γ_s factor and such a model describes the hadron multiplicities measured in nucleus-nucleus collisions at AGS, SPS and RHIC energies with χ^2/dof = 1.15. Surprisingly, at low energies we find not the strangeness suppression, but its enhancement. Also we suggest an alternative approach to treat the strange particle freeze-out separately, but with the full chemical equilibration. This approach is based on the conservation laws which allow us to connect the freeze-outs of strange and non-strange hadrons. Within the suggested approach the same set of hadron multiplicities can be described better than within the conventional approach with χ^2/dof = 1.06. Remarkably, the fully equilibrated approach describes the strange hyperons and antihyperons much better than the conventional one.

6 pages, 5 figures