Strange baryon production and quark coalescence probability in Au + Au collisions at √^SNN = 130 GeV

A quark counting model has been tested for the yield ratios of strange baryons, including Λ, Ξ^-, Ω^-, and their antiparticles at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Only dressed (not bare) quarks are taken into account as all gluons are assumed to have converted to quark-antiquark pairs by gg → qq̄. The quark counting model reproduces the measured yield ratios of various strange baryons reasonably well at √S_NN = 130 GeV, which may imply that the relevant degrees of freedom at collider energies are quarks and gluons. The ratios of various strange baryons to negative hadrons are all similar, which can be interpreted as a similar quark coalescence probability independent of the quark flavor. We predict that the quark coalescence probability for strange baryons is about (4 ∼ 6) × 10^-6 after integrating over the transverse momentum.