Universality of thermal hadron production in pp, p{\bar p} and e^+e^- collisions

Abstract

It is shown that the hadron production in high energy pp, p{\bar p} and e^+e^- collisions, calculated by assuming that particles originate in hadron gas fireballs at thermal and partial chemical equilibrium, agrees very well with the data. The temperature of the hadron gas fireballs, determined by fitting hadron abundances, does not seem to depend on the centre of mass energy and kind of reaction, having a nearly constant value of about 170 MeV. This finding supports a universal hadronization mechanism in all kinds of reactions consisting in a parton-hadron transition at critical values of temperature and pressure.

29 pages, 10 .eps figures, to be published in the Proceedings of the XXXIII Eloisatron Workshop "Universality features in Multihadron production and the leading effect", October 19-25 1996, Erice (Italy) Revision - Few minor text changes and corrections