PROJECTILE STOPPING IN NUCLEUS-NUCLEUS AND HADRON-NUCLEUS COLLISIONS AT 4.2 AND 10 GEV C PER NUCLEON/

The collisions of p, H-2, He-4 and C with carbon and tantalum nuclei a t 4.2 GeV/c per nucleon as well as the collisions p-C and p-Ta at 10 G eV/c from 2-m propane bubble chamber have been studied. New results on nuclear stopping have been obtained from the examination of proton ra pidity distributions and average rapidity of leading protons for colli sions of various degree of centrality: our study points out that a pro ton projectile is fully stopped in the central p-Ta collisions at 4.2 GeV/c but only partly stopped at 10 Gev/c. The proton multiplicity in the central p-Ta collisions at 10 GeV/c can be described by the binomi al distribution, P(n), which expresses the probability that the projec tile meets n protons among the nucleons being along the diameter of a target nucleus.