Study of Strange and Multistrange Particles in Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

% NA57\\ \\ The goal of the experiment is to study the production of strange and multi-strange particles in nucleus-nucleus collisions. This study was initiated at the OMEGA spectrometer, where three ion experiments have been performed: WA85 (S-W and p-W collisions at 200 A GeV/c), WA94 (S-S and p-S collisions at 200 A GeV/c) and WA97 (Pb-Pb, p-Pb and p-Be collisions at 160 A GeV/c).\\ \\ The experiment aims at extending the scope of WA97 by:\\ \\ - investigating the beam energy dependence of the enhancements of multi-strange particle production reported by the previous experiments, and by\\ \\\\ \\- measuring the yields of strange and multi-strange particles over an extended centrality range compared with the previous experiments.\\ \\ The apparatus consists mainly of silicon pixel detector planes.