Chemical nonequilibrium and deconfinement in 200A GeV sulphur induced reactions

We interpret hadronic particle abundances produced in S-Au/W/Pb [Formula Presented] reactions in terms of the final state hadronic phase space model and determine by a data fit of the chemical hadron freeze-out parameters. Allowing for the flavor abundance nonequilibrium a highly significant fit to experimental particle abundance data emerges, which supports the possibility of strangeness distillation. We find under different strategies stable values for freeze-out temperature [Formula Presented] baryochemical potential [Formula Presented] ratio of strangeness [Formula Presented] and light quark [Formula Presented] phase space occupancies [Formula Presented] and [Formula Presented] without accounting for collective expansion (radial flow). When introducing flow effects which allow a consistent description of the transverse mass particle spectra, yielding [Formula Presented] we find [Formula Presented] The strange quark fugacity is fitted at [Formula Presented] suggesting chemical freeze-out directly from the deconfined phase.