We employ the UrQMD transport + hydrodynamics hybrid model to estimate the effects of a separation of the hot equilibrated core and the dilute corona created in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. It is shown that the fraction of the system that can be regarded as an equilibrated fireball changes over a wide range of energies. This has an impact, especially on strange particle abundances. We show that such a core corona separation allows for an improvement in the description of strange particle ratios and flow as a function of beam energy as well as strange particle yields as a function of centrality.

• Received 26 April 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.84.024905