Chemical Freezeout in Heavy Ion Collisions

Derek Teaney Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973-5000 (Dated: February 8, 2008) Abstract We construct a hadronic equation of state consistent with chemical freezeout and discuss how such an equation of state modifies the radial and elliptic flow in a hydrodynamic + hadronic cascade model of relativistic heavy ion collisions at the SPS. Incorporating chemical freezeout does not change the relation between pressure and energy density. However, it does change the relation between temperature and energy density. Consequently, when the hydrodynamic solution and freezeout are expressed in terms of energy density, chemical freezeout does not modify the hydrodynamic radial and elliptic flow velocities studied previously. Finally, we examine chemical freezeout within the hadronic cascade (RQMD). Once chemical freezeout is incorporated into the hydrodynamics, the final spectra and fireball lifetimes are insensitive to the temperature at which the switch from hydrodynamics to cascade is made. Closer inspection indicates that the pion spectrum in chemically frozen hydrodynamics is significantly cooler than in the hydro+cascade model. This difference is reflected in v2(pT ). We extract the freezeout hadron density in RQMD and interpret it in thermal terms; the freezeout hadron density corresponds to a freezeout temperature of Tf ≈ 100 MeV and μπ ≈ 80 MeV.