Strangeness suppression, the ϕ meson and ΛΛ̅ spin correlations from exact strangeness conservation at the quark level

@misc{castorina2026strangeness,
  title = {{Strangeness suppression, the $ϕ$ meson and $Λ\barΛ$ spin correlations from exact strangeness conservation at the quark level}},
  author = {P. Castorina and H. Satz},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.20449},
  eprint = {2610.20449},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20449},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Strangeness suppression, the ϕ meson and ΛΛ̅ spin correlations from exact strangeness conservation at the quark level
AU  - P. Castorina
AU  - H. Satz
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/14
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.20449
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20449
AB  - In small collision systems strange hadrons are suppressed, and the suppression grows with the number of strange quarks. Exact strangeness conservation in a finite volume accounts for this, but when it is imposed on hadrons it leaves the ϕ meson unsuppressed, contrary to observation. We impose the conservation law on the strange quarks in a causally connected cluster, before hadronization, and count separately the combinations of a strange quark with the antiquark created together with it. A pair created from the vacuum cannot form a ϕ, a pair created from a gluon can only if it loses its color. With one function of multiplicity, the mean number of strange quarks per cluster, the model describes kaons, ϕ, Ξ and Ω in pp and p--Pb collisions at the LHC; the data require that about half of the same-pair combinations are excluded from the ϕ, and reject both an unsuppressed ϕ and a ϕ built only from different pairs at about five standard deviations. The same-pair combinations are those that carry the spin correlation observed in ΛΛ̅ production, whose dilution is thereby tied to the ϕ suppression and is predicted to decrease with multiplicity
ER  -