Baryon rapidity loss in relativistic Au + Au collisions

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Mar 5;86(10):1970-3. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.1970.

Abstract

An excitation function of proton rapidity distributions for different centralities is reported from AGS Experiment E917 for Au+Au collisions at 6, 8, and 10.8 GeV/nucleon. The rapidity distributions from peripheral collisions have a valley at midrapidity which smoothly change to distributions that display a broad peak at midrapidity for central collisions. The mean rapidity loss increases with increasing beam energy, whereas the fraction of protons consistent with isotropic emission from a stationary source at midrapidity decreases with increasing beam energy. The data suggest that the stopping is substantially less than complete at these energies.