The ϕ mean free path in hot hadronic matter

Abstract

We calculate the ϕ meson collision rate and mean free path in a hot hadronic gas. The hidden local symmetry model is used to take into account interactions of ϕ mesons with pseudoscalar (π, K) and vector mesons (ρ, ω, K*, ϕ). In contrast to previous calculations we find a significantly small mean free path (around 1 fm at T = 200 MeV). This implies that ϕ mesons produced after hadronization in relativistic heavy-ion collisions will not leave the collision region without scattering. The consequences of these findings to the analysis of ϕ yields are discussed.