Correlating strangeness enhancement and J/ψ suppression in heavy ion collisions at sNN=17.2GeV

It is shown that the strangeness enhancement and the J/ψ anomalous suppression patterns observed in heavy ion collisions at top SPS energy, sNN=17.2GeV, exhibit an interesting correlation if studied as a function of the transverse size of the interaction region. The onset of both phenomena seems to occur when the size exceeds ≈4fm. Strangeness enhancement is defined in terms of the strangeness undersaturation factor γS and J/ψ anomalous suppression in terms of the deviation from the absorption expected in a purely hadronic scenario.