Equation of state of hadron resonance gas and the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter

The equation of state of hadron resonance gas at finite temperature and baryon density is calculated taking into account finite-size effects within the excluded-volume model. Contributions of known hadrons with masses up to 2 GeV are included in the zero-width approximation. Special attention is paid to the role of strange hadrons in the system with zero total strangeness. A density-dependent mean field is added to guarantee that the nuclear matter has a saturation point and a liquid-gas phase transition. The deconfined phase is described by the bag model with lowest order perturbative corrections. The phasetransition boundaries are found by using the Gibbs conditions with the strangeness neutrality constraint. The sensitivity of the phase diagram to the hadronic excluded volume and to the parametrization of the mean-field is investigated. The possibility of strangeness-antistrangeness separation in the mixed phase is analyzed. It is demonstrated that the peaks in the K/pi and I >/pi excitation functions observed at low SPS energies can be explained by a nonmonotonous behavior of the strangeness fugacity along the chemical freeze-out line.