Evidence of early multistrange hadron freeze-out in high energy nuclear collisions

Recently reported transverse momentum distributions of strange hadrons produced in Pb(158A GeV) on Pb collisions and corresponding results from the relativistic quantum molecular dynamics approach are examined. We argue that the experimental observations favor a scenario in which multistrange hadrons are formed and decouple from the system rather early at large energy densities (at about 1 GeV/fm(3)). The systematics of the strange and nonstrange particle spectra indicate that the observed transverse flow develops mainly in the late hadronic stages of these reactions.