2003/04/03 by P. Braun-Munzinger, Peter Braun-Munzinger, K. Redlich +3 · 154 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Charged particle #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #Excitation #Hadron #Heavy ion #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear physics research studies #Particle (ecology) #Production (economics) #Quantum chromodynamics #Range (aeronautics) #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/9789812795533_0008
published in WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks, 491-599 (World Scientific) · Invited review for Quark Gluon Plasma 3, eds. R. C. Hwa and Xin-Nian Wang, World Scientific Publishing
arxiv created 2003/04/03 · openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv updated 2016/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The status of thermal model descriptions of particle production in heavy ion collisions is presented. We discuss the formulation of statistical models with different implementation of the conservation laws and indicate their applicability in heavy ion and elementary particle collisions. We analyze experimental data on hadronic abundances obtained in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, in a very broad energy range starting from RHIC/BNL (\√ s=200 A GeV), SPS/CERN (\√ s\≃ 20 A GeV) up to AGS/BNL (\√ s\≃ 5 A GeV) and SIS/GSI (\√ s\≃ 2 A GeV) to test equilibration of the fireball created in the collision. We argue that the statistical approach provides a very satisfactory description of experimental data covering this wide energy range. Any deviations of the model predictions from the data are indicated. We discuss the unified description of particle chemical freeze--out and the excitation functions of different particle species. At SPS and RHIC energy the relation of freeze--out parameters with the QCD phase boundary is analyzed. Furthermore, the application of the extended statistical model to quantitative understanding of open and hidden charm hadron yields is considered.