Chemical freeze-out in heavy ion collisions at large baryon densities
  We argue that the chemical freeze-out in heavy ion collisions at high baryon density is not associated to a phase transition or rapid crossover. We employ the linear nucleon-meson model with parameters fixed by the zero-temperature properties of nuclear matter close to the liquid-gas quantum phase transition. For the parameter region of interest this yields a reliable picture of the thermodynamic and chiral properties at non-zero temperature. The chemical freeze-out observed in low-energy experiments occurs when baryon densities fall below a critical value of about 15 percent of nuclear density. This region in the phase diagram is far away from any phase transition or rapid crossover. 
Stefan Floerchinger and Christof Wetterich
nucl-th hep-ph