Quark number scaling of $p_{T}$ spectra for $\Omega$ and $\phi$ in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the transverse momentum spectra of $$ baryons and $$ mesons in heavy-ion collisions follow a constituent quark number scaling, revealing insights into quark combination and hadronization.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract strange quark spectra from experimental data using quark number scaling and analyzes their properties across different energies.

Findings

Quark number scaling observed from RHIC to LHC energies.

Strange quark spectra can be derived from hadron data.

Energy dependence of transverse momentum and flow velocity studied.

Abstract

We show that the experimental data of transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) spectra of $\Omega$ baryon and $\phi$ meson at mid-rapidity in heavy-ion collisions exhibit the constituent quark number scaling in a wide energy range from RHIC to LHC. Such a scaling behavior is a direct consequence of quark combination mechanism via equal velocity combination and provides a very convenient way to extract the $p_{T}$ spectrum of strange quarks at hadronization. We present the results of strange quarks obtained from the available data and study the properties in particular the energy dependence of the averaged transverse momentum $\langle p_{T}\rangle$ and the transverse radial flow velocity $\langle\beta\rangle$ with a hydrodynamics-motivated blast-wave model.