Thermal production of strange particles

Abstract

Global strangeness production in elementary and relativistic heavy-ion collisions is reviewed within the framework of the statistical hadronization model. It is shown that recent RHIC data on strange particle production as a function of centrality can be explained by a superposition of a fully equilibrated hadron gas and particle emission from single independent nucleon–nucleon collisions in the outer corona. It is argued that strangeness suppression in elementary collisions with respect to a fully equilibrated hadron gas can be explained within a model where hadronization is interpreted as a hadronic Hawking–Unruh radiation.