Fluctuations of the azimuthal particle distribution in NA49 at the CERN SPS

Event-by-event fluctuations and correlations in azimuthal angle are currently widely investigated in various experiments. In this paper the $\Phi$ measure (earlier used in experiments to evaluate fluctuations in transverse momentum) is now applied to azimuthal angle $\phi$. Properties of this $\Phi_{\phi}$ function are investigated through fast generators and with complex models such as Pythia, Hijing, and UrQMD. Preliminary results of NA49 on $\Phi_{\phi}$ are also presented. The system size dependence (p+p, C+C, Si+Si and 6 centralities of Pb+Pb) at the highest SPS energy (158$A$ GeV) is shown, as well as the energy dependence (20$A$ - 158$A$ GeV) for the 7.2\% most central Pb+Pb interactions.Comment: Proceedings from Hot Quarks 2010,June 21-2

Strangeness Suppression in Proton-Proton Collisions

We analyse strangeness production in proton-proton (pp) collisions at SPS and RHIC energies, using the recently advanced NeXus approach. After having verified that the model reproduces well the existing data, we interpret the results: strangeness is suppressed in proton-proton collisions at SPS energy as compared to electron-positron (e+e-) annihilation due to the limited masses of the strings produced in the reaction, whereas high energy pp and e+e- collisions agree quantitatively . Thus strangeness suppression at SPS energies is a consequence of the limited phase-space available in string fragmentation.Comment: 7 Figures, 4 Page