Probing Strangeness Hadronization with Event-by-Event Production of Multistrange Hadrons

Abstract

This Letter presents the first measurement of event-by-event fluctuations of the net number (difference between the particle and antiparticle multiplicities) of multistrange hadrons Ξ- and Ξ¯+ and its correlation with the net-kaon number using the data collected by the ALICE Collaboration in pp, p-Pb, and Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair sNN=5.02 TeV. The statistical hadronization model with a correlation over three units of rapidity between hadrons having the same and opposite strangeness content successfully describes the results. On the other hand, string-fragmentation models that mainly correlate strange hadrons with opposite strange quark content over a small rapidity range fail to describe the data. © 2025 CERN.