Baryon stopping and hyperon enhancement in the improved dual parton model - art. no. 054906

We present an improved version of the dual parton model which contains a ne w realization of the diquark breaking mechanism of baryon stopping. We repr oduce in this way the net baryon yield in nuclear collisions. The model, wh ich also considers strings originating from diquark-antidiquark pairs in th e nucleon sea, reproduces the observed yields of p and Lambda and their ant iparticles and underestimates cascades by less than 50%. However, Omega's a re underestimated by a factor of 5. Agreement with data is restored by fina l state interaction, with an averaged cross section as small as sigma=0.14m b. Hyperon yields increase significantly faster than antihyperons, in agree ment with experiment. [S0556-2813(99)05709-X].