We have studied the coherent dissociation of neutrons into pπ− systems, for a variety of nuclear targets, at incident momenta up to 300 GeV/c. Using a model incorporating both electromagnetic and hadronic production, we have extracted total cross sections for scattering of unstable pπ− systems on nucleons.
In a beam-dump experiment at Fermilab the cross section for charm-particle production has been deduced from a measurement of the prompt neutrino flux. The reaction cross section, if we assume only DD¯ and the dependence on atomic weight A0.75, is 57.2 ± 2.9 ± 8.5 μb/nucleon and the dependence on Feynman x and transverse momentum is EDd3σdpD3∝(1−x)3.2e−1.5p⊥ (p⊥ in GeV/c). The data are consistent with as much as 40% diffractive production of ΛcD¯.