Results are reported concerning the charged-particle multiplicity distribution obtained in an exposure of the high-resolution hydrogen bubble chamber LEBC to a beam of 800 GeV protons at the Fermilab MPS. This is the first time that such data have been available at this energy. The distribution of the number n ch of charged particles produced in inelastic interactions obeys KNO-scaling. The average multiplicity is 〈 n ch 〉 = 10.26±0.15. For n ch ⩾8 the data can be well fitted to a negative binomial. The difference between the overall experimental multiplicity distribution and that resulting from the latter fit is in agreement with the contribution expected from diffractive processes.
The elastic and topological p¯p cross sections have been measured at 48.9 GeV/c in the Fermilab proportional-wire-chamber-30-in.-bubble-chamber hybrid spectrometer. The elastic cross section is 7.81±0.24 mb and the slope of the elastic differential cross section at t=0 is 13.4±0.8 GeV−2. Further, the moments of the inelastic topological-cross-section distribution are 〈nc〉=5.69±0.03, 〈nc〉D=2.10±0.02, and f2cc=1.67±0.12.