Pion Suppression in Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

The pion multiplicity per participating nucleon in central nucleus-nucleus collisions at the energies 2-15 A GeV is significantly smaller than in nucleon-nucleon interactions at the same collision energy. This effect of pion suppression is argued to appear due to the evolution of the system produced at the early stage of heavy-ion collisions towards a local thermodynamic equilibrium and further isentropic expansion.

Comments: a revised version, to be published in Eur. Phys. J. C (1998)