Some Aspects of Transverse Momentum Distributions of Particles Produced in High Energy Nucleon–Nucleus Interactions

Abstract

The pt distributions of pions, protons, deuterons, tritons, and 3He produced in interactions of 24 GeV/c protons with heavy emulsion nuclei have been experimentally investigated. The dependence of [Formula: see text] on the shower multiplicity, the angle of emission, and on the mass of the particles has been studied. The characteristics of pions have been observed to be similar to those produced in hadron–hadron interactions. It has been concluded that perhaps the pickup process is responsible for the production of heavier fragments and that most of the pions are produced in the first basic nucleon–nucleon collisions.