Isospin and isospin/strangeness correlations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

A fundamental symmetry of nuclear and particle physics is isospin whose third component is the Gell-Mann/Nishijima expression $I_{Z} = Q-(B+S)/2$. The role of isospin symmetry in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is studied. An isospin IZ, strangeness S correlation is shown to be a direct and simple measure of flavor correlations, vanishing in a Qg phase of uncorrelated flavors in both symmetric $N = Z$ and asymmetric N $\ne$ Z systems. By contrast, in a hadron phase, a $I_{Z}/S$ correlation exists as long as the electrostatic charge chemical potential $\mu _{Q}$ $\ne$ 0 as in N $\ne$ Z asymmetric systems. A parallel is drawn with a Zeeman effect which breaks a spin degeneracy