| Summary: | Includes bibliographical references. === The hadron production (especially kaon production) and the hadronic ratios (especially K/π) in heavy ion collisions are studied assuming that particles are produced in a hadron gas at both thermal and chemical equilibrium. The final state in relativistic ion collision is described by a hadronic gas model which is governed by two freeze out parameters, namely, temperature T and baryon density B/V. It is found that for large interaction volumes and/or large net baryon number, a description using the grand canonical ensemble could be justified. For a small system however, corrections arising solely from exact strangeness and baryon number conservation cannot be neglected. Analytic results for the partition function and the particle numbers are presented. A detailed numerical evaluation is made. A comparison of the behaviour of the results with the experimental information is made. A review of kaon production and K/π ratio and the comparisons of the hadron gas model with recent experimental results is made.
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