Energy Dependence of Particle Ratios in High Energy Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: A USTFM Approach

Abstract

We study the identified particle ratios produced at mid-rapidity in heavy ion collisions, along with their correlations with the collision energy. We employ our earlier proposed Unified Statistical Thermal Freeze-out Model (USTFM), which incorporates the effects of both longitudinal as well as transverse hydrodynamic flow in the hot hadronic system. A fair agreement seen between the experimental data and our model results confirms that the particle production in these collisions is of statistical nature. The variation of the chemical freeze-out temperature and the baryon chemical potential with respect to collision energies is studied. The chemical freeze-out temperature is found to be almost constant beyond the RHIC energy and is found to be close to the QCD predicted phase transition temperature suggesting that the chemical freeze-out occurs soon after the hadronization takes place. The vanishing value of chemical potential at LHC indicates very high degree of nuclear transparency in the collision.