High energy hadron production as self-organized criticality

Abstract

In high energy nuclear collisions, production rates of light nuclei as well as those of hadrons and hadronic resonances agree with the predictions of an ideal gas at a temperature [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]MeV. In an equilibrium hadronic medium of this temperature, light nuclei cannot survive. We propose that the observed behavior is due to an evolution in global non-equilibrium, leading to self-organized criticality. At the confinement point, the initial quark-gluon medium becomes quenched by the vacuum, breaking up into all allowed free hadronic and nuclear mass states without formation of any subsequent thermal hadronic medium.