Baryon number and strangeness: signals of a deconfined antecedent

Abstract

The correlation between baryon number and strangeness is used to discern the nature of the deconfined matter produced at vanishing chemical potential in high-energy nuclear collisions at the BNL RHIC. Comparisons of results of various phenomenological models with correlations extracted from lattice QCD calculations suggest that a quasi-particle picture applies. At finite baryon densities, such as those encountered at the CERN SPS, it is demonstrated that the presence of a first-order phase transition and the accompanying development of spinodal decomposition would significantly enhance the number of strangeness carriers and the associated fluctuations.

10 pages, 4 figures, latex, to appear in the proceedings of the Workshop on Correlations and Fluctuations in Relativistic Nuclear collisions, (MIT, April 21-23,2005)