Non-equilibrium properties of hadronic mixtures

The equilibration of hot hadronic matter is studied in the framework of relativistic kinetic theory. Various non-equilibrium properties of a mixture comprised of pions, kaons and nucleons are calculated in the dilute limit for small deviations from local thermal equilibrium. Interactions between these constituents are specified through the empirical phase shifts. The properties calculated include the relaxation/collision times, momentum and energy persistence ratios in elastic collisions, and transport properties such as the viscosity, the thermal conductivity, and the diffusion and thermal diffusion coefficients. The Chapman-Enskog formalism is extended to extract relaxation times associated with shear and heat flows, and drag and diffusion flows in a mixture. The equilibrium number concentration of the constituents is chosen to mimic those expected in the mid-rapidity interval of CERN and RHIC experiments. In this case, kaons and nucleons are found to equilibrate significantly more slowly than pions. These results shed new light on the influence of collective flow effects on the transverse momentum distributions of kaons and nucleons versus those of pions in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions.