Near-threshold production of the multistrange Xi- hyperon.
/ Authors
P. Chung, N. Ajitanand, J. Alexander, M. Anderson, D. Best, F. Brady, T. Case, W. Caskey, D. Cebra, J. Chance
and 44 more authors
B. Cole, K. Crowe, A. Das, J. Draper, M. Gilkes, S. Gushue, M. Heffner, A. Hirsch, E. Hjort, W. Holzmann, L. Huo, M. Issah, M. Justice, M. Kaplan, D. Keane, J. Kintner, J. Klay, D. Krofcheck, R. Lacey, J. Lauret, M. Lisa, Honghai Liu, Y. M. Liu, J. Milan, R. McGrath, Z. Milosevich, G. Odyniec, D. Olson, S. Panitkin, N. Porile, G. Rai, H. Ritter, J. Romero, R. Scharenberg, B. Srivastava, N. Stone, T. Symons, A. Taranenko, J. Whitfield, T. Wienold, R. Witt, L. Wood, Weigang Zhang, H. Oeschler
/ Abstract
The yield for the multistrange Xi(-) hyperon has been measured in 6A GeV Au+Au collisions via reconstruction of its decay products pi(-) and Lambda, the latter also being reconstructed from its daughter tracks of pi(-) and p. The measurement is rather close to the threshold for Xi(-) production and therefore provides an important test of model predictions. The measured yield for Xi(-) and Lambda are compared for several centralities. In central collisions the Xi(-) yield is found to be in excellent agreement with statistical and transport model predictions, suggesting that multistrange hadron production approaches chemical equilibrium in high baryon density nuclear matter.
Journal: Physical review letters