A comparative analysis of statistical hadron production

TL;DR

This paper systematically compares statistical models of hadron production across different collision types to determine if the description quality varies with collision nature, finding similar model performance for pp, AA, and e+e- collisions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of statistical hadron production models across various collision systems, highlighting the consistent quality of descriptions regardless of collision type.

Findings

Model description quality is similar across collision types.

Nuclear collisions do not necessarily produce more thermal-like multiplicities.

Data consistency and error analysis are crucial for meaningful comparisons.

Abstract

We perform a systematic comparison of the statistical model parametrization of hadron abundances measured in high energy pp, AA and e+e- collisions. The basic aim of the study is to test if the quality of the description depends on the nature of the collision process. In particular, we want to see if nuclear collisions, with multiple initial interactions, lead to "more thermal" average multiplicities than elementary pp collisions or e+e- annihilation. Such a comparison is meaningful only if it is based on data for the same or similar hadronic species and if the analyzed data has quantitatively similar errors. When these requirements are maintained, the quality of the statistical model description is found to be the same for the different initial collision configurations.