The production of neutral strange particlesKso, Λ and\(\bar \Lambda \) has been studied in 60 and 200 GeV per nucleon OAu and pAu collisions with the streamer chamber vertex spectrometer of the NA35 experiment at the CERN-SPS accelerator. Ratios of neutral strange particle production to negatively charged particle production in selected regions of phase space were measured to be the same in OAu and pAu reactions. The rates of strange particle production in central OAu collisions are about a factor of 16 higher than in pAu collisions when compared in the same regions of phase space. If an enhancement of strange particle production in OAu collisions relative to pAu collisions is considered to be a signature for quark-gluon plasma formation, no evidence supporting it is observed. The experimental results are compared to the Lund FRITIOF model.
Production of Λ, Λ , and K s 0 has been measured for a wide range of event multiplicity in S+Pb reactions at 200 GeV/c per nucleon. The production of Λ is shown to increase with multiplicity faster than expected from a superposition of p+p collisions. The effect is seen for low multiplicity (below 100 negative particles).
The production of Λ,\(\bar \Lambda\) andKs0 has been studied in 200 GeV/nucleonp+S and S+S collisions in the streamer chamber of the NA35 experiment at the CERN SPS. Significant enhancement of the multiplicities of all observed strange particles relative to negative hadrons was observed in central S+S collisions, as compared top+p andp+S collisions. The latter collisions show no overall (relative) strangeness enhancement overp+p, but the rapidity distributions and hadron multiplicities indicate some secondary cascading production of Λ particles in thep+S andp+Au collisions. The Λ polarization in central S+S collisions was found to be compatible with zero up topT=2 GeV/c.
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