An experiment has been performed with the Fermilab 30-inch bubble chamber and Downstream Particle Identifier to study inclusive charged pion production in the high energy interactions of π±,K+,p and\(\bar p\) with thin foils of magnesium, silver and gold. The laboratory rapidity and transverse momentum distributions are presented separately for π+ and π− production. Comparisons are made with data from hadron-proton interactions and theA dependence of the cross sections in the different kinematic regions is discussed. We investigate the dependence of the cross sections on the number of observed protons ejected from the nucleus. By using our π−A data from two different beam energies, we study the energy dependence of these spectra. Comparisons are made with the VENUS string model Monte Carlo.
We report differential cross sections for the production of D*(2010) produced in 500 GeV/c pi^- nucleon interactions from experiment E791 at Fermilab, as functions of Feynman-x (x_F) and transverse momentum squared (p_T^2). We also report the D* +/- charge asymmetry and spin-density matrix elements as functions of these variables. Investigation of the spin-density matrix elements shows no evidence of polarization. The average values of the spin alignment are \eta= 0.01 +- 0.02 and -0.01 +- 0.02 for leading and non-leading particles, respectively.