Thermal rates for baryon and antibaryon production

We use a form of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to derive formulas giving the rate of production of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ baryons in terms of the fluctuations of either meson or quark fields. The most general formulas do not assume thermal or chemical equilibrium. When evaluated in a thermal ensemble we find equilibration times on the order of $10\mathrm{fm}/c$ near the critical temperature in QCD.