Understanding baryon stopping at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider top energies

The nucleon exhibits a rich internal structure governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), where its electric charge arises from valence quarks, while its spin and mass emerge from complex interactions among valence quarks, sea (anti)quarks, and gluons. At the advent of QCD, an alternative hypothesis emerged suggesting, at high energies, the transport of a nucleon's baryon number could be traced by a nonperturbative configuration of gluon fields connecting its three valence quarks, forming a <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <a:mi>Y</a:mi> </a:math> -shaped topology known as the gluon junction. Recent measurements by the STAR experiment are compatible with this scenario. In light of these measurements, this study aims to explore the mechanisms of baryon transport in high-energy nuclear collisions using the -8 framework, which incorporates a state-of-the-art hadronization model with advanced color flow (CF) and color reconnection (CR) mechanisms that mimic signatures of a baryon junction. Within this model setup, we investigate (i) the rapidity slope of the net-baryon distributions in photon-included processes <b:math xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <b:mrow> <b:mo>(</b:mo> <b:mi>γ</b:mi> <b:mo>+</b:mo> <b:mi>p</b:mi> <b:mo>)</b:mo> </b:mrow> </b:math> and (ii) baryon over charge transport in the isobaric <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <c:mrow> <c:mo>(</c:mo> <c:mi>Ru</c:mi> <c:mo>+</c:mo> <c:mi>Ru</c:mi> </c:mrow> <c:mo> </c:mo> <c:mtext>and</c:mtext> <c:mo> </c:mo> <c:mrow> <c:mi>Zr</c:mi> <c:mo>+</c:mo> <c:mi>Zr</c:mi> <c:mo>)</c:mo> </c:mrow> </c:math> collisions. Our study highlights the importance of the CF and CR mechanisms in -8, which play a crucial role in baryon transport. The results show that the CF and CR schemes significantly affect the isobaric baryon-to-charge ratio, leading to different predictions for baryon stopping and underscoring the need to account for CF and CR effects in comparisons with experimental measurements.