Dr. Jerome Malenfant
Senior Assistant Editor
PRL

RE: LH7586, by H. Liu et al. (E895 Collaboration).

Dear Dr. Malenfant:

We thank both referees for their very positive comments on this 
manuscript.  Since receipt of the referee reports, we have carried 
out an additional round of quality assurance checks on the data, 
including further detector simulations with improved realism.  As 
a result of these additional checks, the results being reported at 
6 and 8A GeV have changed slightly (comparable to error bars).  We 
are sending a new REVTEX compuscript and three new figures.  

We have addressed the five specific points raised by Referee B as 
follows:

1) The two confusing sentences in the paragraph beginning near the 
   end of page 3 have been rewritten.  

2) The first paragraph on page 5 has been extensively revised and 
   more detail has been added.  We believe that the explanation of 
   the Py gate is now more clear.  

3) The notation y' is defined where it is first used, two-thirds of 
   the way down page 4.  That definition has been revised to improve 
   clarity.  We have also added a reminder in the Fig. 1 caption that 
   y' refers to normalized rapidity such that the target is at y'=-1 
   and the projectile at y'=+1.     
   
4) We have incorporated the recommended wording change in the sentence 
   where v1 is first mentioned (near the middle of page 6). 

5) The wording about predictions from different versions of the BEM 
   code has been changed to improve clarity.

       Sincerely,
       Declan Keane