Pseudorapidity distribution and cluster formation in 50 and 400 GeV/c hadron–nucleus interactions

Abstract

From the study of the pseudorapidity, η, distributions of charged shower particles produced in 50 GeV/c π− – nucleus and 400 GeV/c proton (p)–nucleus collisions, and their dependence on various parameters, the maxima of η distributions are noticed to shift towards smaller values of η with increasing Ng. Bimodality in the η distributions for all Ng groups has been observed to be completely absent in 50 GeV/c π− – nucleus interactions. Furthermore, the value of [Formula: see text] is found to decrease monotonically with increasing Ng, Ns, and Nh. The dispersions of the rapidity distributions D(η) do not, however, demonstrate any tendency of appreciable change with increasing Ng, except in the region of small Ng values. Finally, study of rapidity-gap length distributions reveals that the two-particle short-range correlations play a dominant role while the contribution of long-range correlations seems to be quite small.