Importance of multi-mesonic fusion processes on (strange) antibaryon production

Abstract

Sufficiently fast chemical equilibration of (strange) antibaryons in an environment of nucleons, pions and kaons during the course of a relativistic heavy ion collision can be understood by a `clustering' of mesons to build up baryon-antibaryon pairs. This multi-mesonic (fusion-type) process has to exist in medium due to the principle of detailed balance. Novel numerical calculations for a dynamical setup are presented. They show that - at maximum SPS energies - yields of each antihyperon specie are obtained which are consistent with chemical saturated populations of T approximately 150-160 MeV, in line with popular chemical freeze-out parameters extracted from thermal model analyses.

14 pages, 8 figures; new version in standard reftex; version of proceedings attached as postscript file; invited talk at CRIS2002, 4th Catania Relativistic Ion Studies, Exotic Clustering, June 10-14, 2002