Centrality dependence of strangeness enhancement in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions: A core-corona effect

Abstract

In ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, the multiplicity of multistrange baryons per participating nucleon increases with centrality in a different fashion for different systems and energies. At RHIC, for copper+copper (CuCu) collisions the increase is much steeper than for gold-gold ($\mathrm{Au}\mathrm{Au}$) collisions. We show that this system size dependence is due to a core-corona effect: the relative importance of the corona as compared to the core (thermalized matter) contribution varies and the contribution of a corona nucleon to the multiplicity differs from that of a core nucleon. \ensuremath{\phi} mesons follow---as all hadrons---the same trend, but the difference between core and corona multiplicity is relatively small, and therefore the CuCu and $\mathrm{Au}\mathrm{Au}$ results are quite similar. This simple geometrical explanation makes also a strong case in favor of the validity of Glauber geometry in the peripheral regions of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, which is crucial for understanding the early evolution of the system.