Hawking-Unruh hadronization and strangeness production in high energy collisions

TL;DR

This paper proposes a thermal hadronization model based on Hawking-Unruh radiation, explaining strangeness suppression in elementary collisions and its reduction in nucleus-nucleus collisions due to quark density effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interpretation of hadronization as tunneling through an event horizon, linking quark acceleration to a universal temperature and explaining strangeness production patterns.

Findings

Universal Unruh temperature explains hadron spectra.

Strangeness suppression decreases with higher quark density.

Model aligns with observed differences between elementary and nuclear collisions.

Abstract

The interpretation of quark ($q$)- antiquark ($\bar q$) pairs production and the sequential string breaking as tunneling through the event horizon of colour confinement leads to a thermal hadronic spectrum with a universal Unruh temperature, $T \simeq 165$ Mev,related to the quark acceleration, $a$, by $T=a/2\pi$. The resulting temperature depends on the quark mass and then on the content of the produced hadrons, causing a deviation from full equilibrium and hence a suppression of strange particle production in elementary collisions. In nucleus-nucleus collisions, where the quark density is much bigger, one has to introduce an average temperature (acceleration) which dilutes the quark mass effect and the strangeness suppression almost disappears.