Similarity of hadron production inpp and heavy-ion collisions

The characteristic features of pseudorapidity distributions of hadron production are investigated in terms of a geometrical parameterh≡(dn/dη)₀/Φ, Φ being the phase space covered by the η distribution. It is found thath is about the same for the heavy-ion (HI) andpp collisions at the same energy, the same for π andK production and behaves ash～E _cm ^?1/3 . This similarity property yieldsK ^?/π^?=0.041±0.004 andK ⁺/K ^?=4.5±0.6 for HI collisions at 14.6 GeV/A in agreement with BNL experiments.