Abstract:
We show that hadron production in
relativistic heavy ion
collisions at transverse momenta larger than
2 GeV/c can be
explained by the competition of two different
hadronization
mechanisms. Above 5 GeV/c hadron production
can be described
by fragmentation of partons that are created
perturbatively.
Below 5 GeV/c recombination of partons from
the dense and
hot fireball dominates. This can explain some
of the
surprising features of RHIC data like the
constant
baryon-to-meson ratio of about one and the
small nuclear
suppression for baryons between 2 to 4 GeV/c.