STUDY OF STRANGENESS ENHANCEMENT IN LEAD-LEAD COLLISIONS AT THE CERN SPS

1 IntroductionStrange particles, produced in high-energy heavy-ion collisions, are amongstthe most powerful tools for the study of reaction dynamics. What makes thisfield of research particularly challenging is the prediction that the yield ofstrange, and especially multiply-strange, (anti-) particles should be stronglyenhanced in the presence of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) as compared to apurely hadronic scenario at the same temperature