How fast is equilibration in hot hadronic matter?

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Abstract
We study various nonequilibrium properties of a mixture comprised of pions, kaons, and nucleons. Quantitative calculations of the relaxation/collision times, the degradation of momentum in elastic collisions, and the relaxation times of shear and heat flows, drag flow, and diffusion flow are performed. Binary interactions are specified through the empirical phase shifts. The heavier kaons and nucleons are found to equilibrate more slowly than pions. These results shed new light on the influence of collective flow effects on the transverse momentum distributions of kaons and nucleons versus those of pions in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions.