Eur. Phys. J. C (2010) 66: 377-386
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-010-1265-y

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

A comparative analysis of statistical hadron production

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, and INFN Sezione di Firenze, Florence, Italy
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Catania, and INFN Sezione di Catania, Catania, Italy
³ Department of Particle Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel
⁴ Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

^* e-mail: becattini@fi.infn.it

Received: 26 November 2009
Revised: 22 January 2010
Published online: 25 February 2010

Abstract

We perform a systematic comparison of the statistical model parametrization of hadron abundances observed in high-energy pp, AA and e ⁺ e ⁻ collisions. The basic aim of the study is to test if the quality of the description depends on the nature of the collision process. In particular, we want to see if nuclear collisions, with multiple initial interactions, lead to “more thermal” average multiplicities than elementary pp collisions or e ⁺ e ⁻ annihilation. Such a comparison is meaningful only if it is based on data for the same or similar hadronic species and if the analyzed data has quantitatively similar errors. When these requirements are maintained, the quality of the statistical model description is found to be the same for the different initial collision configurations.