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The hypothesis of statistical production of J/psi mesons at hadronization is formulated and checked against experimental data. It explains in the natural way the observed scaling behavior of the J/psi to pion ratio at the CERN SPS energies. Using the multiplicities of J/psi and eta mesons the hadronization temperature T_H = 175 MeV is found, which agrees with the previous estimates of the temperature parameter based on the analysis of the hadron yield systematics.
The experimental results on the pion, strangeness and J/psi production in high energy nuclear collisions are discussed. The anomalous energy dependence of pion and strangeness production is consistent with the hypothesis that a transition to a deconfined phase takes place between the top AGS (15 AGeV) and the SPS (200 AGeV) energies. The J/psi production systematics at the SPS can be understood assuming that the J/psi mesons are created at hadronization according to the available hadronic phase space. This new interpretation of the J/psi data allows one to establish a coherent picture of high energy nuclear collisions based on the statistical approaches of the collision early stage and hadronization. Surprisingly, the statistical model of strong interactions is successful even in the region reserved up to now for pQCD based models.
We argue that the measurement of open charm gives a unique opportunity to test the validity of pQCD-based and statistical models of nucleus-nucleus collisions at high energies. We show that various approaches used to estimate D-meson multiplicity in central Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A GeV give predictions which differ by more than a factor of 100. Finally we demonstrate that decisive experimental results concerning the open charm yield in A+A collisions can be obtained using data of the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS.