Intriguing aspects in baryon production at relativistic heavy-ion collider

摘要

We review experimental results on baryon production at mid-rapidity in nucleusa€“nucleus collisions at RHIC. Outstanding physics issues include the mechanism for baryona€“anti-baryon production from thermally equilibrated partons, the dynamics of baryon number transport and the evolution dynamics of baryons during hadronic expansion before the ???nal freeze-out. We highlight recent measurements on the production of protons, lambdas and their anti-particles in terms of these physics issues. We propose a physical mechanism of topological baryon formation through gluon junction hadronization and future measurements, which can test this hypothesis experimentally.