# High Energy Hadron Production as Self-Organized Criticality

## TL;DR

This paper proposes that the observed particle production in high energy nuclear collisions results from a self-organized criticality process, rather than thermal equilibrium, explaining the survival of light nuclei.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel non-equilibrium self-organized criticality model to explain particle production, challenging the traditional thermal equilibrium perspective.

## Key findings

- Particle yields match ideal gas predictions at T=155 MeV.
- Light nuclei survive in a non-equilibrium process, not thermal equilibrium.
- The model explains the breakup of quark-gluon plasma into hadronic states.

## Abstract

In high energy nuclear collisions, production rates of light nuclei as well as those of hadrons and hadronic resonances agree with the predictions of an ideal gas at a temperature T = 155 +/- 10 MeV. In an equilibrium medium of this temperature, light nuclei cannot survive. We propose that the observed behavior is due to an evolution in global non-equilibrium, leading to self-organized criticality. At the confinement point, the initial quark-gluon medium becomes quenched by the vacuum, breaking up into all allowed free hadronic and nuclear mass states, without formation of any subsequent thermal hadronic medium.