Particle decay from statistical thermal model in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions

Abstract

In high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions, it is difficult to measure the contributions of resonance strong decay and weak decay to the final measured hadrons as well as the corresponding effects on some physical observables. To provide a reference from statistical thermal model, we performed a systematic analysis for the energy dependence of particle yield and yield ratios in Au + Au collisions. We found that the primary fraction of final hadrons decreases with increasing collision energy and somehow saturates around $\sqrt{s_\textrm{NN}}$ = 10 GeV, indicating a limiting temperature in hadronic interactions. The fraction of strong or weak decay for final hadrons show a different energy dependence behavior comparing to the primarily produced hadrons. These energy dependences of various particle yield and yield ratios from strong or weak decay can provide us with baselines for many hadronic observables in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions.