Strangeness equilibration in heavy ion collisions Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Using a relativistic transport model for heavy ion collisions at energies that are below the threshold for kaon and antikaon production in nucleon-nucleon collisions, we study how their abundances approach the canonical equilibrium during the collisions. We find that kaons are far from chemical equilibrium at the initial and high density stage, and they approach equilibrium only during the expansion stage of the collisions when their production rate is small and becomes comparable to their annihilation rate. In contrast, antikaons approach chemical equilibrium much earlier but eventually fall out of equilibrium again as a result of their large annihilation cross sections in nuclear matter.

published proceedings

  • Physical Review C - Nuclear Physics

author list (cited authors)

  • Pal, S., Ko, C. M., & Lin, Z. W.

complete list of authors

  • Pal, S||Ko, CM||Lin, ZW

publication date

  • January 2001