Distribution of transverse and longitudinal momentum in π−p interactions at 7.0 GeV/c

Abstract

We have measuredpt andpi spectra of the pions and protons produced in six- and two-prong interactions in a bubble-chamber experiment. The BNL 80 in, liquid-hydrogen bubble chamber was exposed to a 7.0 GeV/c negative-pion beam. The data are analysed in terms of the Hagedorn model and the two-temperature model of Wayland and Bowen. The temperature of the interaction volume obtained from fitting thept spectra of the pions is below 140 MeV, and for the protons it is close to 180 MeV. Thept spectra of the pions yields a good fit to an expression given in the two-temperature model. We have divided our six-prong data into peripheral and nonperipheral events and the temperature values of the two samples show considerable difference for the protonpt distributions. We have gathered data from the other experiments at different energies. We find that the temperature increases with the rise in incident-particle energy, and it decreases as the multiplicity of the pions produced increases at a fixed incident energy.