Freeze-out conditions from strangeness observables at RHIC

Understand

We determine chemical freeze-out conditions from strangeness observables measured at RHIC beam energies.

• Based on a combined analysis of lowest-order net-Kaon fluctuations and strange anti-baryon over baryon yield ratios we obtain visibly enhanced freeze-out conditions at high beam energies compared to previous studies which analyzed net-proton and net-charge fluctuations.
• Our findings are in qualitative agreement with the recent study [1] which utilizes the net-Kaon fluctuation data in combination with information from lattice QCD.
• Our complimentary approach shows that also strange hadron yield ratios are described by such enhanced freeze-out conditions.