The process of baryon number transfer due to string junction propagation in rapidity is considered. It has a significant effect in the net baryon production in pp collisions at mid-rapidities and an even larger effect in the forward hemisphere in the cases of πp and γp interactions. The results of numerical calculations in the framework of the Quark-Gluon String model are in reasonable agreement with the data.

No abstract

Some auxiliary material has been relegated to the Appendices and could probably aid the reader in making various explicit calculations. We would like to thank A.A. Anselm, I.M. Dremin, S.S. Gerstein, V.G. Grishin, E.M. Levin, N.N. Nikoiaev, M.G. Ryskin, E.V. Shuryak for extremely helpful discussions of the problems considered in the book. We are also deeply indebted to V.N. Gribov: his comments were extremely helpful for us. We are happy to thank our friends and colleagues V.M. Braun, L.G. Dakhno, A.K. Likhoded and P.E. Volkovitski: some papers written in collaboration with them are reflected in this work. The authors are grateful to K.K. Phua for his encouragement in writing this book. Two of us (V.V.A. and Yu.M.S.) are much obliged to 0.1. Sumbaev for the permanent support of the investigations presented here: the book could hardly be accomplished without it. We are specially indebted to our deceased friend V.M. Shekhter. Our collaboration with him has provided much material which is being passed on in this book. This book is dedicated to his memory.

The process of baryon number transfer due to string junction propagation in rapidity is considered. It has a significant effect in the net baryon production in pp collisions at mid-rapidities and an even larger effect in the forward hemisphere in the cases of πp and γp interactions. The results of numerical calculations in the framework of the Quark-Gluon String Model are in reasonable agreement with the data with the same parameter values for different energies.