Centrality and collision system dependence of antiproton production from p+A to Au+Au collisions at AGS energies

Antiproton production in heavy ion collisions reflects subtle interplay between initial production and absorption by nucleons. Because the AGS energies (10--20 A(center-dot)GeV/c) are close to the antiproton production threshold, antiproton may be sensitive to cooperative processes such as QGP and hadronic multi-step processes. On the other hand, antiproton has been proposed as a probe of baryon density due to large N(anti N) annihilation cross sections. Cascade models predict the maximum baryon density reaches about 10 times the normal nucleus density in central Au+Au collisions, where the strong antiproton absorption is expected. In this paper, the authors show systematic studies of antiproton production from p+A to Au+Au collisions.