Jet quenching and thep¯≳π−anomaly in heavy ion collisions at relativistic energies

PHENIX data on $\mathrm{Au}+\mathrm{Au}$ at $\sqrt{s}=130A\hspace{0.5em}\mathrm{GeV}$ suggest that $\overline{p}$ yields may exceed ${\pi }^{-}$ at high $p_{\mathrm{T}}>2\mathrm{}\hspace{0.5em}\mathrm{GeV}/c.\mathrm{}$ We propose that jet quenching in central collisions suppresses the hard PQCD component of the spectra in central $A+A$ reactions, thereby exposing a novel component of baryon dynamics that we attribute to (gluonic) bayron junctions. We predict that the observed $\overline{p}\gtrsim {\pi }^{-}$ and the $p>\mathrm{}{\pi }^{+}$ anomaly at $p_{\mathrm{T}}\sim 2\hspace{0.5em}\mathrm{GeV}/c$ is limited to a finite $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ window that decreases with increasing impact parameter.