We have measured the multiplicities of pions produced in the collisions of π mesons with neon nuclei at bombarding momenta of 10.5 and 200 GeV/c. The diffractive production of pions is clearly separable. If one excludes the diffractive part, the pion multiplicity obeys the same Koba-Nielsen-Olesen scaling as found previously for π−−p collisions. This fact would seem to indicate the validity of an energy-flux or collective-variable description of the production process. A surprisingly large number of energetic protons (> 1 GeV/c lab momentum) are found to be produced in π-Ne collisions.
Production of B(1235) and ρ(1710) mesons is observed in the four-pion decay modes π+π+π−π0 in 16−GeVc π±p collisions. Decay distributions and branching fractions into various modes are presented. Absence of the two-pion mode π−π0 for the ρ(1710) is noted.