Quark fragmentation functions from high-energy nuclear collisions

Abstract

An additive quark model is used to derive relations which allow determination of fragmentation functions of "wounded" and spectator quarks from the $A$ dependence of the spectra of particles produced in high-energy, low-momentum-transfer collisions of hadrons and nuclei. The method is applied to spectra of strange particles produced in 300-GeV proton-nucleus collisions. The implications for a fragmentation mechanism of high-energy hadrons are discussed.