Centrality Dependent Strange Baryon Production in P-A and its Implications for Heavy Ion Collisions

BNL E910 has measured strange baryon production as a function of collision centrality for 17.5 GeV/c p-Au collisions. Collision centrality is defined by v1 the mean number projectile-nucleon interactions estimated from the ''grey'' track multiplicity. The measured Λ yield increases faster than the participant scaling expectation for v (le) 3 and then saturates. A simple parameterization of this dependence applied to nucleus-nucleus collisions reproduces the measured E866 km. and WA97 Λ centrality dependent yields. The increase in Λ production to v (le) 3 is also evident for Λs which are leading baryons, in disagreement with predictions from RQMD