Strange Particle Production in p+p, p+Pb and Pb+Pb Interactions from NA49

TL;DR

This paper reports on strange particle production in various high-energy collision systems, revealing similarities in Lambda and Antilambda production across different systems and energies, and highlighting the enhanced yields in larger collision systems.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of strange baryon production in p+p, p+Pb, and Pb+Pb collisions at different energies, and compares these results to existing data to understand strangeness enhancement.

Findings

Lambda and Antilambda production shows similar energy dependence in p+p and A+A collisions.

Yields increase faster than wounded nucleons, especially for multistrange baryons.

K+/pi ratio is affected by associated production with Lambda particles.

Abstract

Recent NA49 results on Lambda, Antilambda, Xi- and Antixi+ production in minimum bias p+p and centrality selected p+Pb collisions at 158 GeV/c, and the results on Lambda, Antilambda, K+ and K- production in central Pb+Pb collisions at 40, 80 and 158 A GeV are discussed and compared with other available data. By comparing the energy dependence of Lambda and Antilambda production at mid-rapidity a striking similarity is observed between p+p and A+A data. This is also seen in the energy dependence of the Lambda/pi ratio. K+/pi at mid-rapidity is affected in a similar way, due to the associated production of K+ together with Lambda particles. The observed yields increase faster than the number of wounded nucleons when comparing p+Pb to p+p. As already observed in A+A collisions, the increase is larger for multistrange than for strange baryons and for baryons than for anti-baryons.