Strange Particle Production at RHIC

Abstract

We report STAR measurements of mid-rapidity yields for the $\Lambda$, $\bar{\Lambda}$, $K^{0}_{S}$, $\Xi^{-}$, $\bar{\Xi}^{+}$, $\Omega^{-}$, and $\bar{\Omega}^{+}$ particles in Cu+Cu and Au+Au $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV collisions. We show that at a given number of participating nucleons, bulk strangeness production is higher in Cu+Cu collisions compared to Au+Au collisions at the same center of mass energy, counter to predictions from the Canonical formalism. We compare both the Cu+Cu and Au+Au yields to AMPT and EPOS predictions, and find they reproduce key qualitative aspects of the data. Finally, we investigate other scaling parameters and find bulk strangeness production for both the measured data and theoretical predictions, scales better with the number participants that undergo more than one collision.