Hadron resonances and phase threshold in heavy ion collisions

We show that a measurement of the reaction energy (s) dependence of relative hadron resonance yields in heavy ion collisions can be used to study the phase structure of the dense strongly interacting matter created in these collisions and investigate the origin of the trends observed in the excitation functions of certain soft hadronic observables. We show that the presence of chemical nonequilibrium in light quark abundance imparts a characteristic signature on the energy dependence of resonance yields that differs considerably from what is expected in the equilibrium picture.