Collisions of Small Nuclei in the Thermal Model

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how the thermal model predicts particle production in small nucleus collisions, showing that maxima in strange particle ratios diminish with smaller nuclei but the $ ext{ extLambda}/ ext{ extpi}^+$ ratio's maximum persists.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how particle ratio maxima vary with nuclear size in the thermal model, especially highlighting the persistence of the $ ext{ extLambda}/ ext{ extpi}^+$ maximum.

Findings

Maxima in strange particle to pion ratios decrease with smaller nuclei.

The $ ext{ extLambda}/ ext{ extpi}^+$ ratio's maximum remains even in small nucleus collisions.

Thermal model predictions are sensitive to the size of the colliding nuclei.

Abstract

An analysis is presented of the expectations of the thermal model for particle production in collisions of small nuclei. The maxima observed in particle ratios of strange particles to pions as a function of beam energy in heavy ion collisions, are reduced when considering smaller nuclei. Of particular interest is the $\Lambda/\pi^+$ ratio shows the strongest maximum which survives even in collisions of small nuclei.