Particle Production and Equilibration in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

The application of statistical model in heavy ion collisions is discussed in the energy range from SIS/GSI through AGS/BNL up to SPS /CERN and RHIC/BNL. It is shown that in this broad energy range hadronic yields and their ratios resemble a thermal equilibrium population along a unified freeze-out curve determined by the condition of fixed energy per particle approximately= 1 GeV. The role of exact conservation of quantum numbers in the kinetic description of rarely produced particles is also analyzed. (64 refs).

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