Centrality dependence of chemical freeze-out parameters and strangeness equilibration in RHIC and LHC energies

Abstract

We have estimated centrality variation of chemical freeze-out parameters from yield data at mid-rapidity of $π^\pm$, $K^\pm$ and $p$, $\bar{p}$ for collision energies of RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider), Beam Energy Scan (RHIC-BES) program, and LHC (Large Hadron Collider). We have considered a simple hadron resonance gas model and employed a formalism involving conserved charges ($B, Q, S$) of QCD for parameterization. Along with temperature and three chemical potentials ($T,μ_B,μ_Q,μ_S$), a strangeness under-saturation factor ($γ_S$) has been used to incorporate the partial equilibration in the strange sector. Our obtained freeze-out temperature does not vary much with centrality, whereas chemical potentials and $γ_S$ seem to have a significant dependence. The strange hadrons are found to deviate from a complete chemical equilibrium at freeze-out at the peripheral collisions. This deviation appears to be more prominent as the collision energy decreases at lower RHIC-BES energies. We have also shown that this departure from equilibrium reduces towards central collisions, and strange particle equilibration may happen after a threshold number of participants in $A$-$A$ collision.