Determination of the number of wounded nucleons in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A GeV/c

Abstract The charged particle multiplicity distributions measured with the WA97 and the NA57 multiplicity detectors in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A GeV/ c have been analyzed in the framework of the Wounded Nucleon Model (WNM). We obtain a good description of the data within the centrality range of our samples. This allows us to make use of the measured multiplicities to estimate the number of wounded nucleons of the collision.