Central events in the interactions of 28Si and 32S with heavy emulsion targets

Data on the multiplicity of secondaries in central events of 28Si (14.6 AGeV) and 32S (3.7 AGeV) interactions with AgBr emulsion nuclei have been compiled and studied. The dependence of the multiplicities of the outgoing charged stripping particles on the number of interacting nucleons and therefore on the impact parameter, as indicated by the target size, and consequently, on the degree of centrality is investigated. The resultant multiplicity distribution of the produced pions for each studied case is fitted by both Negative Binomial (NB) and Poisson distributions. The NB distribution is valid for most of the considered cases. The transparency of the target for a projectile was found to become more pronounced as the incident energy increased. (orig.)