Centrality dependence of thermal parameters in heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies

The centrality dependence of thermal parameters, characterizing the hadron multiplicities, is determined phenomenologically for lead-on-lead collisions at CERN-SPS for a beam energy of 158 AGeV. The strangeness equilibration factor shows a clear, approximately linear, increase with increasing centrality, while the freeze-out temperature and chemical potential remain constant.