During the recent commissioning of Au beams at the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron facility, experiment 886 measured production cross sections for π±, K±, p, and p¯ in minimum bias Au+Pt collisions at 11.5A GeV/c. Invariant differential cross sections, Ed3σ/dp3, were measured at several rigidities (p/Z≤1.8 GeV/c) using a 5.7° (fixed-angle) focusing spectrometer. For comparison, particle production was measured in minimum bias Si+Pt collisions at 14.6A GeV/c using the same apparatus and in p+Pt collisions at 12.9 GeV/c using a similar spectrometer at KEK. When normalized to projectile mass, Aproj, the measured π± and K± cross sections are nearly equal for the p+Pt and Si+Pt reactions. In contrast to this behavior, the π− cross section measured in Au+Pt shows a significant excess beyond Aproj scaling of the p+Pt measurement. This enhancement suggests collective phenomena contribute significantly to π− production in the larger Au+Pt colliding system. For the Au+Pt reaction, the π+ and K+ yields also exceed Aproj scaling of p+Pt collisions. However, little significance can be attributed to these excesses due to larger experimental uncertainties for the positive rigidity Au beam measurements. For antiprotons, the Si+Pt and Au+Pt cross sections fall well below Aproj scaling of the p+Pt yields indicating a substantial fraction of the nuclear projectile is ineffective for p¯ production. Comparing with p+Pt multiplicities, the Si+Pt and Au+Pt antiproton yields agree with that expected solely from ‘‘first’’ nucleon-nucleon collisions (i.e., collisions between previously unstruck nucleons). In light of expected p¯ annihilation in the colliding system, such projectile independence is unexpected without additional (projectile dependent) sources of p¯ production. In this case, the data indicate an approximate balance exists between absorption and additional sources of antiprotons. This balance is remarkable given the wide range of projectile mass spanned by these measurements.
We have measured the inclusive cross-section as a function of missing energy, due to the production of neutrinos or new weakly interacting neutral particles in 450 GeV/c proton-nucleus collisions, using calorimetric measurements of visible event energy. Upper limits are placed on the production of new particles as a function of their energy. These upper limits are typically an order
The collisions ofp,2H,4He and C with carbon and tantalum nuclei at 4.2 GeV/c per nucleon as well as the collisionsp-C andp-Ta at 10 GeV/c from 2-m propane bubble chamber have been studied. New results on nuclear stopping have been obtained from the examination of proton rapidity distributions and average rapidity of leading protons for collisions of various degree of centrality: our study points out that a proton projectile is fully stopped in the centralp-Ta collisions at 4.2 GeV/c but only partly stopped at 10 Gev/c. The proton multiplicity in the centralp-Ta collisions at 10 GeV/c can be described by the binomial distribution,P(n), which expresses the probability that the projectile meetsn protons among the nucleons being along the diameter of a target nucleus.
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