Rapidity losses in heavy-ion collisions from AGS to RHIC energies

Abstract

We study the rapidity losses in central heavy-ion collisions from AGS to RHIC energies with the mean rapidity determined from the projectile net-baryon distribution after collisions. The projectile net-baryon distribution in the full rapidity range was obtained by removing the target contribution phenomenologically at forward rapidity region from the experimental net-baryon measurements and taking into account the projectile contribution at backward rapidity region. Based on the full projectile net-baryon distributions, calculation results show that the rapidity loss stops increasing from the SPS top energy to RHIC energies, indicating that baryon transport does not depend strongly on energy at high energies.