text: Yield equilibration of strangeness yield in QGP is only possible due to a new process, gluon fusion, as shown by Rafelski and Müller. The top section of the Feynman diagrams figure, shows the new gluon fusion processes: gluons are the wavy lines; strange quarks are the solid lines; time runs from left to right. The bottom section is the process where the heavier quark pair arises from the lighter pair of quarks shown as dashed lines. The gluon fusion process occurs almost ten times faster than the quark-based strangeness process, and allows achievement of the high thermal yield where the quark based process would fail to do so during the duration of the "micro-bang".
  The ratio of newly produced  pairs with the normalized light quark pairs —the  Wroblewski ratio—is considered a measure of efficacy of strangeness production. This ratio more than doubles in heavy ion collisions, providing a model independent confirmation of a new mechanism of strangeness production operating in collisions that are producing QGP.
  Regarding charm and bottom flavour: the gluon collisions here are occurring within the thermal matter phase and thus are different from the high energy processes that can ensue in the early stages of the collisions when the nuclei crash into each other. The heavier, charm and bottom quarks are produced there dominantly. The study in relativistic nuclear (heavy ion) collisions of charmed and soon also bottom hadronic particle production—beside strangeness—will provide complementary and important confirmation of the mechanisms of formation, evolution and hadronization of quark–gluon plasma in the laboratory.