Energy dependence of strangeness production and event-byevent fluctuations

Abstract

We review the energy dependence of strangeness production in nucleus-nucleus collisions and contrast it with the experimental observations in pp and p-A collisions at LHC energies as a function of the charged particle multiplicities. For the high multiplicity final states the results from pp and p-Pb reactions systematically approach the values obtained from Pb-Pb collisions. In statistical models this implies an approach to the thermodynamic limit, where differences of mean multiplicities between various formalisms, such as Canonical and Grand Canonical Ensembles, vanish. Furthermore, we report on event-by-event net-proton fluctuations as measured by STAR at RHIC/BNL and by ALICE at LHC/CERN and discuss various non-dynamical contributions to these measurements, which should be properly subtracted before comparison to theoretical calculations on dynamical net-baryon fluctuations.