  We explore the consequences of a freeze-out criterion for heavy-ion
collisions, based on pion escape probabilities from the hot and dense but
rapidly expanding collision region. The influence of the expansion and the
scattering rate on the escape probability is studied. The temperature
dependence of this scattering rate favors a low freeze-out temperature of ~100
MeV. In general, our results support freeze-out along finite four-volumes
rather than sharp three-dimensional hypersurfaces, with high-pt particles
decoupling earlier from smaller volumes. We compare our approach to the
proposed universal freeze-out criteria using the pion phase-space density and
its mean free path.
