Stopping: from peripheral to central nuclear collisions at the SPS Original Research Article

New results on baryon stopping at the CERN SPS, measured by the inclusive net proton (p-View the MathML source) rapidity distribution, are presented for centrality selected Pb+Pb and p+Pb, as well as minimum bias p+p collisions. A smooth evolution in the degree of stopping is observed when going from small to large systems, with the greatest stopping in the most central p+Pb collisions. On the other hand, longitudinal distributions of produced particles vary little with the size of the system, and the total yield of pions scales approximately with the number of participating nucleons.