System-size dependence of strangeness saturation

The final state in heavy-ion collisions has a higher degree of strangeness saturation than the one produced in collisions between elementary particles such as p–p or . A systematic analysis of this phenomenon is made for C–C, Si–Si and Pb–Pb collisions at the CERN SPS collider and for Au–Au collisions at RHIC and at AGS energies. Strangeness saturation is shown to increase smoothly with the number of participants at AGS, CERN and RHIC energies.