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Hadron yield correlation and constituent quark degree of freedom in heavy ion collisions

Based on the assumption of the production of deconfined quark matter, we use a quark combination model to systematically investigate hadron yields in heavy ion collisions from RHIC $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200, 130, 62.4$ GeV to SPS $E_{beam}=158, 80, 40, 30, 20 $ AGeV. We find that as the collision energy is greater than or equal to 30 AGeV the yields of various hadrons, their correlations, in particular, the observables $A=\frac{\barΛ k^{-} p}{Λk^{+} \bar{p}}$ and $B=\frac{Λk^{-}\barΞ^{+}}{\barΛ k^{+}Ξ^{-}}$, are all reproduced; however, as the collision energy drops to 20 AGeV quark combination fails. This indicates that the constituent quark degrees of freedom represent a decisive factor in thermal hadron production above 30 AGeV and seem to be invalid at 20 AGeV. In addition, hadron yields as well as particle ratios at midrapidity in the most central Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.5$ TeV are predicted.