Strangeness production in pA and AA collisions at 158 A GeV

LUCIAE, a hadronic and string cascade model and its corresponding event gen erator are used to analyse strangeness production singly and multiply in p- Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at 158 A GeV. Spectra of multiplicity and transvers e mass for single (Lambda, <(Lambda)over bar>) and multiple (Xi(-), <(Xi(-) )over bar>, Omega(-), <(Omega(-))over bar>) strangeness are given. In LUCIA E model it suggests a physical mechanism, i.e. the dependence of the strang e quark suppression factor on incident energy, projectile mass and centrali ty of colliding system might result in increase of yield of strange particl es with increasing the above three parameters. Calculations from the model reconstruct well the WA97 experimental data: increase of yield of strange p articles with increasing centrality and increase of strangeness enhancement with increasing number of strange quarks, in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions.