The Role of Strangeness in Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

We review the progress in understanding the strange particle yields in nuclear collisions and their role in signalling quark-gluon plasma formation. We report on new insights into the formation mechanisms of strange particles during ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions and discuss interesting new details of the strangeness phase diagram. In the main part of the review we show how the measured (multi-)strange particle abundances can be used as a testing ground for chemical equilibration in nuclear collisions, and how the results of such an analysis lead to important constraints on the collision dynamics and space-time evolution of high energy heavy-ion reactions.