Description of the RHIC p_T-spectra in a thermal model with expansion

Abstract

The assumption of simultaneous chemical and thermal freeze-outs of the hadron gas leads to a surprisingly accurate, albeit entirely conventional, explanation of the recently-measured RHIC pT spectra. The original thermal spectra are supplied with secondaries from decays of all resonances, and subsequently folded with a suitably parameterized expansion involving longitudinal and transverse flow. The predictions of this thermal approach, with various parametrizations for the expansion, are in a striking quantitative agreement with the data in the whole available range of 0 < pT < 3.5GeV.

Published version, minor changes (revtex, 6 pages, 2 figures)