# Missing resonance decays in thermal models

## TL;DR

This paper estimates the impact of missing decay channels in thermal models of high-mass resonances, revealing a systematic charge conservation violation of about 5-8%, suggesting the need to include this as an error in hadron gas calculations.

## Contribution

It quantifies the systematic uncertainty caused by missing decay channels in thermal models of high-mass resonances at SPS energies.

## Key findings

- Charge conservation violation of 5-8% due to missing decay channels.
- Estimated missing charge states: ΔB ≈ 0.16, ΔQ ≈ 0.12, ΔS ≈ -0.01.
- Systematic error should be considered in hadron gas calculations.

## Abstract

Detailed information on decay channel probabilities is absent for many high mass resonances, which are typically included in thermal models. In these cases, the sum over all known decay branching probabilities is smaller than 1. Due to this systematic uncertainty of the model, the exact charge conservation may appear to be violated. We estimate the corresponding number of missing charge states in the canonical ensemble formulation of the hadron resonance gas for p+p reactions at the SPS energy $E_{\rm lab}=158$ GeV: $\Delta B \simeq 0.16$ for baryon charge, $\Delta Q\simeq 0.12$ for electric charge, and $\Delta S=-0.01$ for strangeness. The value of the considered effect is 5-8%, which seems to be important enough to include it as a systematic error in the calculations within a hadron gas.