Analysis of Subthreshold Antiproton Production in p-Nucleus and Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions in the RBUU Approach

We calculate the subthreshold production of antiprotons in the Lorentz-covariant RBUU approach employing a weighted testparticle method to treat the antiproton propagation and absorption nonperturbatively. We find that the pbar differential cross sections are highly sensitive to the baryon and antiproton selfenergies in the dense baryonic environment. Adopting the baryon scalar and vector selfenergies from the empirical optical potential for proton-nucleus elastic scattering and from Dirac-Brueckner calculations at higher density rho > rho_0 we examine the differential pbar spectra as a function of the antiproton selfenergy. A detailed comparison with the available experimental data for p-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus reactions shows that the antiproton feels a moderately attractive mean-field at normal nuclear matter density rho_0 which is in line with a dispersive potential extracted from the free annihilation cross section