Energy dependence of pbar/p ratio in p+p collisions

Subhash Singha, Pawan Kumar Netrakanti, Lokesh Kumar, Bedangadas Mohanty

Published 2010-09-28Version 1

We have compiled the experimentally measured pbar/p ratio at midrapidity in p+p collisions from \sqrt{s} = 23 to 7000 GeV and compared it to various mechanisms of baryon production as implemented in PYTHIA, PHOJET and HIJING/B-Bbar models. For the models studied with default settings, PHOJET has the best agreement with the measurements, PYTHIA gives a higher value for \sqrt{s} < 200 GeV and the ratios from HIJING/B-Bbar are consistently lower for all the \sqrt{s} studied. Comparison of the data to different mechanisms of baryon production as implemented in PYTHIA shows that through a suitable tuning of the suppression of diquark-antidiquark pair production in the color field relative to quark-antiquark production and allowing the diquarks to split according to the popcorn scheme gives a fairly reasonable description of the measured pbar/p ratio for \sqrt{s} < 200 GeV. Comparison of the beam energy dependence of the pbar/p ratio in p+p and nucleus-nucleus (A+A) collisions at midrapidity shows that the baryon production is significantly more for A+A collisions relative to p+p collisions for \sqrt{s} < 200 GeV. We also carry out a phenomenological fit to the y_beam dependence of the pbar/p ratio.