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.
Charged-particle multiplicity distributions in 400-GeV/c pd interactions have been studied in an experiment in the Fermilab 30-inch bubble chamber. From the fractions of odd-prong and backward-proton events, a rescatter fraction of 0.22±0.01 is found (for N≥3). The pn multiplicity distribution is obtained from the odd-prong distribution plus a no-cascade assumption. After making one-prong and two-prong estimates, mean charged-particle multiplicities of 9.49±0.12 for pd (including slow particles) and 8.57±0.12 for pn are obtained. In the incident momentum range 100 to 400 GeV/c, pd and pp distributions are very similar to each other and are different from pn distributions.
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