System and Energy Dependence of Strangeness Production with STAR Original Research Article

The yields and spectra of strange hadrons have each been measured by STAR as a function of centrality in View the MathML source AuAu collisions. By comparing to pp and dAu at View the MathML source and in AuAu at View the MathML source the dependence on system size and energy is studied. Strange resonances, such as Σ(1385) and Λ(1520), are used to examine the dynamical evolution between production and freeze-out for these systems. Particle production is investigated by comparison to thermal models, which assume a scaling of the yield with Npart. Our hyperon measurements in AuAu indicate that Nbin may be a more appropriate scale for the strangeness correlation volume. Thus canonical suppression can not be simply parameterized with the geometrical overlap volume but will depend on the individual quark content of each particle. This theory is tested by comparing the data from different collision systems and centralities.