Chemical freeze-out conditions from net-kaon fluctuations at RHIC

Abstract: We compare the mean-over-variance ratio of the net-kaon distribution calculated within a state-of-the-art hadron resonance gas model to the latest experimental data from the Beam Energy Scan at RHIC by the STAR collaboration. Our analysis indicates that it is not possible to reproduce the experimental results using the freeze-out parameters from the existing combined fit of net-proton and net-electric charge mean-over-variance. The strange mesons need about 10-15 MeV higher temperatures than the light hadrons at the highest collision energies. In view of the recent lambda fluctuation measurements, we predict the net-lambda variance-over-mean at the light and strange chemical freeze-out parameters. We observe that the lambda fluctuations are sensitive to the difference in the freeze-out temperatures established in this analysis. Our results have implications for other phenomenological models in the field of relativistic heavy-ion collisions.