Aspects of thermal and chemical equilibration of hadronic matter

We study thermal and chemical equilibration in 'ifinite' hadron matter as well as in finite size relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions using a BUU cascade transport model that contains resonance and string degrees-of-freedom. The 'infinite' hadron matter is simulated within a cubic box with periodic boundary conditions. The various equilibration times depend on baryon density and energy density and are much shorter for particles consisting of light quarks then for particles including strangeness. For kaons and antikaons the chemical equilibration time is found to be larger than similar or equal to 40 fm/c for all baryon and energy densities considered. The inclusion of continuum excitations, i.e., hadron 'strings', leads to a limiting temperature of T-S similar or equal to 150 MeV. We, furthermore, study the expansion of a hadronic fireball after equilibration. The slope parameters of the particles after expansion increase with their mass; the pions leave the fireball much faster then nucleons and accelerate subsequently heavier hadrons by rescattering ('pion wind'). If the system before expansion is close to the limiting temperature T-S, the slope parameters for all particles after expansion practically do not depend on (initial) energy and baryon density. Finally, the equilibration in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is considered. Since the reaction time here is much shorter than the equilibration time for strangeness, a chemical equilibrium of strange particles in heavy-ion collisions is not supported by our transport calculations. However, the various particle spectra can approximately be described within the blast model. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.