Baryon number transfer and baryon pair production in soft hadronic interactions at the CERN SPS

Abstract

Results on proton and neutron production in p+p interactions at 158 GeV beam energy are presented. The distribution of net baryon density, in particular concerning the feed-over between target and projectile hemispheres, is determined from π^± + p and p + p interactions, invoking the non-baryonic nature of pion projectile. For p+p collisions, net baryon density is studied in association with a final state proton. It is demonstrated that net baryon production is described by a factorizing two-component mechanism. The maximum range of baryon number transfer is limited to about 4.5 units of rapidity. Using a comparison of anti-proton production in p+p and n+p interactions it is shown that baryon pair production depends on the valence structure of the incoming hadrons and is characterized by strong charge-asymmetric contributions of the type $\bar{p}n$ and $p\bar{n}$ in addition to the symmetric terms $\bar{p}p$ and $\bar{n}n$.

PACS: 13.85.Ni Baryon production in hadronic interactions