Thermalization of dense hadronic matter in Au + Au collisions at energies available at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research

Abstract

The conditions of local thermodynamic equilibrium of baryons (nonstrange, strange) and mesons (strange) are presented for central Au + Au collisions at Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) energies using the microscopic transport model UrQMD. The net particle density, longitudinal-to-transverse pressure anisotropy, and inverse slope parameters of the energy spectra of nonstrange and strange hadrons are calculated inside a cell in the central region within rapidity window $|y|l1.0$ at different time steps after the collisions. We observed that the strangeness content is dominated by baryons at all energies; however, contributions from mesons become significant at higher energies. The time scale obtained from local pressure (momentum) isotropization and thermalization of energy spectra are nearly equal and found to decrease with increase in laboratory energy. The equilibrium thermodynamic properties of the system are obtained with a statistical thermal model. The time evolution of the entropy densities at FAIR energies are found to be very similar to the ideal hydrodynamic behavior at top Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energy.