Diffractive proteon fragmentation in 16, 32, and 110 GeV/cK − p interactions and the diffractive production of heavy quarks $$(s\bar s,c\bar c)$$

Abstract

The inclusive proton diffraction dissociation cross sections in 16, 32, and 110 GeV/cK−p interactions are determined from the spike nearx=1 in the inclusive negative particle spectra and are compared to those obtained inK−p interactions using other selection methods at various energies. The same procedure is applied to events containing aV0 in order to obtain the cross section for diffractive\(s\bar s\) production. While the total cross section for proton diffraction is found to be approximately constant in the energy range studied here, proton diffraction yielding an\(s\bar s - pair\) is found to increase significantly. In particular it is almost constant at 85 μb forΛ0 and Σ production but for\(NK\bar K\) it rises from zero at 16 GeV.c to about 200 μb at 110 GeV/c. From the result for\(s\bar s\) diffractive production an estimate for the\(c\bar c\) diffractive production cross section of approximately 1–10 μb at 110 GeV/c is obtained.