Lattice calculations of the QCD trace anomaly at temperatures $T<160$ MeV have been shown to match hadron resonance gas model calculations, which include an exponentially rising hadron mass spectrum. In this paper we perform a more detailed comparison of the model calculations to lattice data that confirms the need for an exponentially increasing density of hadronic states. Also, we find that the lattice data is compatible with a hadron density of states that goes as $\rho \left(m\right)\sim m^{-a}\exp (m/T_H)$ at large $m$ with $a>5/2$ (where $T_H\sim 167$ MeV). With this specific subleading contribution to the density of states, heavy resonances are most likely to undergo two-body decay (instead of multiparticle decay), which facilitates their inclusion into hadron transport codes. Moreover, estimates for the shear viscosity and the shear relaxation time coefficient of the hadron resonance model computed within the excluded volume approximation suggest that these transport coefficients are sensitive to the parameters that define the hadron mass spectrum.

• Received 1 July 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.86.024913