EMISSION OF RELATIVISTIC HADRONS IN THE BACKWARD HEMISPHERE IN NUCLEAR COLLISIONS

Abstract

The behavior of the relativistic charged particle multiplicities and the pseudorapidity distributions for 4.5A and 14.5A GeV /c28 Si -nucleus interactions are investigated in terms of the number of emitted relativistic hadrons in the backward hemisphere, [Formula: see text] (relativistic charged particles emitted with space angle θs such that θs lies in the interval 90°≤θs≤270°). The η distribution of relativistic charged particles for the interactions with [Formula: see text] are found to be quite nicely fitted by a single Gaussian distribution (GD), while it is fitted by two distinct GD's when the interactions are not accompanied by backward relativistic hadrons. This, in turn, suggests that in the production of events having [Formula: see text] probably two different mechanisms operate.