Z(b)(10610) in a hadronic medium

In this work we investigate the Z(b)(10610) (called simply Z(b)) abundance in the hot hadron gas produced in heavy ion collisions after the quark-gluon plasma phase. We use effective Lagrangians to calculate the thermally averaged cross sections of Z(b) production in processes such as B-({*}()) + (B) over bar ((){*}()) -> pi + Z(b)(10610) and also of its absorption in the corresponding inverse processes. We then solve the rate equation to follow the time evolution of the Z(b) multiplicity. We find that, if we neglect the Z(b) decay, the number of Z(b)'s produced at the end of the quark-gluon plasma phase remains almost constant during the hadron phase. The introduction of the decay in the rate equation leads to a suppression in the final yield by a factor two. (AU)