Antiproton production and annihilation in nuclear collisions at 15AGeV

Abstract
We present a calculation of antiproton yields in Si+Al and Si+Au collisions at 14.5A GeV in the framework of the relativistic quantum molecular dynamics approach (RQMD). Multistep processes lead to the formation of high-mass flux tubes. Their decay dominates the initial antibaryon yield. However, the subsequent annihilation in the surrounding baryon-rich matter suppresses the antiproton yield considerably: Two-thirds of all antibaryons are annihilated even for the light Si+Al system. Comparisons with preliminary data of the E802 experiment support this analysis.