title: Hadron formation in relativistic nuclear collisions and the QCD phase diagram.
abstract: We study particle production in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions at CERN SPS and LHC energies and the conditions of chemical freeze-out. We determine the effect of the inelastic reactions between hadrons occurring after hadronization and before chemical freeze-out employing the ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics hybrid model. The differences between the initial and the final hadronic multiplicities after the rescattering stage resemble the pattern of data deviation from the statistical equilibrium calculations. By taking these differences into account in the statistical model analysis of the data, we are able to reconstruct the original hadrochemical equilibrium points in the (T, μ(B)) plane which significantly differ from chemical freeze-out ones and closely follow the parton-hadron phase boundary recently predicted by lattice quantum chromodynamics.
authors.affiliation: Università di Firenze and INFN Sezione di Firenze, 50019 Firenze, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Becattini
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bleicher
authors.forename: Thorsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kollegger
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schuster
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Steinheimer
authors.forename: Reinhard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stock