Strange Content of Baryons at RHIC

Abstract

Via the study of strange particle production within the STAR experiment, we try to address the surprising amount of baryon transport at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We report here preliminary results showing that, at mid-rapidity and for the top energy of RHIC, the number of created baryons exceeds the number transported from the colliding nuclei. However, thanks to the large acceptance of the experimental setup, one could expect to observe the transition between the ``soft'' regime (low transverse momentum -$\pt$- region corresponding to a bulk of hot and dense matter hadronizing) and the perturbative one (higher $\pt$ region) where the fragmentation of incoming partons is supposed to dominate hadron production.}