dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaUniversal chemical freeze-out as a phase transition signature
| Authors | Ulrich Heinz, Gregory Kestin |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | nucl-th/0612105 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/0612105 |
| Journal | PoS CPOD2006:038,2006 |
Abstract
It is shown that kinetic freeze-out in relativistic heavy-ion collisions invariably entails a non-trivial dependence of the freeze-out temperature on the collision centrality. The centrality independence of the chemical freeze-out temperature observed in Au+Au collisions at RHIC is therefore inconsistent with the hypothesis that hadron abundances decouple kinetically from inelastic hadron-hadron interactions. On the other hand, it is consistent with the hypothesis that chemical decoupling is driven by the quark-hadron phase transition, and that the observed universal chemical freeze-out reflects its critical temperature, independent of the dynamical state of the collision fireball as it passes through the phase transition.
{
"annotation_id": "0028f179-8081-4ee9-81f3-1a9fca5131c5",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:00:11.734000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:00:11.734000Z",
"file_hash": "00f04c40476f48fdf9f4c76b6bc0a117da7a4346e3253001ece08d405b076f71",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "It is shown that kinetic freeze-out in relativistic heavy-ion collisions\ninvariably entails a non-trivial dependence of the freeze-out temperature on\nthe collision centrality. The centrality independence of the chemical\nfreeze-out temperature observed in Au+Au collisions at RHIC is therefore\ninconsistent with the hypothesis that hadron abundances decouple kinetically\nfrom inelastic hadron-hadron interactions. On the other hand, it is consistent\nwith the hypothesis that chemical decoupling is driven by the quark-hadron\nphase transition, and that the observed universal chemical freeze-out reflects\nits critical temperature, independent of the dynamical state of the collision\nfireball as it passes through the phase transition.",
"arxiv_id": "nucl-th/0612105",
"authors": [
"Ulrich Heinz",
"Gregory Kestin"
],
"categories": [
"nucl-th"
],
"journal_ref": "PoS CPOD2006:038,2006",
"title": "Universal chemical freeze-out as a phase transition signature",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/0612105"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "ce7cf918-53ec-45d1-89c2-7ae7c7b6d8dd",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}