Antiproton Production in p-Nucleus and Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions within a Relativistic Transport Approach

Abstract

The production of antiprotons in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus reactions is calculated within the relativistic BUU approach employing proper selfenergies for the baryons and antiprotons and treating the p-bar annihilation nonperturbatively. The differential cross section for the antiprotons is found to be very sensitive to the p-bar selfenergy adopted. A detailed comparison with the available experimental data for p-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus reactions shows that the antiproton feels a moderately attractive mean-field at normal nuclear matter density which is in line with a dispersive potential extracted from the free annihilation cross section.