# Thermal Model Description of p--Pb Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} $ = 5.02 TeV

## TL;DR

This study applies a thermal model with exact strangeness conservation to p-Pb collision data at 5.02 TeV, revealing consistent chemical freeze-out temperatures and near-equilibrium strangeness production across different multiplicities.

## Contribution

It introduces a thermal model analysis with canonical approach and exact strangeness conservation for p-Pb collisions at LHC energies.

## Key findings

- Chemical freeze-out temperature ~160 MeV, independent of centrality.
- Strangeness non-equilibrium factor γ_s close to 1, increasing with multiplicity.
- Results consistent with those from Pb-Pb collisions at lower energy.

## Abstract

The ALICE data on light flavor hadron production obtained in $p-Pb$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} $ = 5.02 TeV are studied in the thermal model using the canonical approach with exact strangeness conservation. The chemical freeze-out temperature is independent of centrality except for the lowest multiplicity bin, with values close to 160 MeV but consistent with those obtained in $Pb-Pb$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV. The value of the strangeness non-equilibrium factor $\gamma_s$ is slowly increasing with multiplicity from 0.9 to 0.96, i.e. it is always very close to full chemical equilibrium.