Strangeness Production in Heavy Ion Collisions: What Have We Learnt with the Energy Increase from SPS to RHIC

Abstract

A review of strange particle production in heavy ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies is presented. The particle yields and ratios from SPS and RHIC are discussed in view of the newest developments in understanding collision dynamics, and in view of their role in the search for a quark gluon plasma. A strangeness enhancement, most notably observed in CERN Pb‐beam results, shows a remarkable two fold global enhancement with a much larger effect seen in the case of multistrange baryons. Hadronic models did fail to explain this pattern. At RHIC energy strangeness assumes a different role, since temperatures are higher and the central rapidity region almost baryon‐free. An intriguing question: “Did RHIC change the way we understand strangeness production in heavy ion collisions ?” is discussed.