Strange anti‐baryons—QGP versus HC

We study quark‐gluon plasma (QGP) and hadronic gas (HG) models of the central fireball presumed to be the source of abundantly produced strange (anti‐)baryons in S→W collisions at 200 GeV A. We consider how multi‐strange (anti‐)baryon multiplicities depend on strangeness conservation and compare the HG and QGP fireball scenarios. We argue that the total particle multiplicity emerging from the central rapidity region as well as the variation of production rates with changes in the beam energy allows to distinguish between the two reaction scenarios.