Canonical aspects of strangeness enhancement

Abstract Strangeness enhancement (SE) in heavy ion collisions can be understood in the statistical model on the basis of canonical suppression. In this formulation, SE is a consequence of the transition from canonical to the asymptotic grand canonical limit and is predicted to be a decreasing function of collision energy. This model predictions are consistent with the recent NA49 data on Λ enhancement at plab = 40, 80, 158GeV.