Inelastic Nuclear Interactions of High-Energy Electrons and Muons in Emulsion

Abstract

An experiment has been carried out to examine the inelastic nuclear interaction properties of high-energy electrons and muons in emulsion. A study was made of interactions produced by 10.5-GeV muons and 10.0- and 16.0-GeV electrons. Total and differential cross sections have been measured and compared with calculations carried out with the formulation of Hand and Wilson for inelastic lepton scattering. On the basis of the calculations, the ratio of electron to muon total cross sections was found to be 3.5:1, whereas experimentally the ratio was measured to be 2.18\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.40 for the 10-GeV leptons. To explain the total cross section for electrons, an average scalar-photon contribution equal to 12% of the transverse-photon cross section is needed, which is consistent with other experiments. The muon cross section was found to be significantly larger than expected, and it cannot be explained by a similar scalar-photon contribution. The energy dependence of the total cross sections is in agreement with theory, as are the angular distributions of the scattered leptons.