Abstract
We present experimental results on inclusive spectra and mean multiplicities of negatively charged pions produced in inelastic p+p interactions at incident projectile momenta of 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c ($\sqrt{s} = $ 6.3, 7.7, 8.8, 12.3 and 17.3 GeV, respectively). The measurements were performed using the large acceptance NA61/SHINE hadron spectrometer at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. Two-dimensional spectra are determined in terms of rapidity and transverse momentum. Their properties such as the width of rapidity distributions and the inverse slope parameter of transverse mass spectra are extracted and their collision energy dependences are presented. The results on inelastic p+p interactions are compared with the corresponding data on central Pb+Pb collisions measured by the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS. The results presented in this paper are part of the NA61/SHINE ion program devoted to the study of the properties of the onset of deconfinement and search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter. They are required for interpretation of results on nucleus-nucleus and proton-nucleus collisions.
Highlights
In addition to the ion programme, NA61/SHINE is conducting precise hadron production measurements for improving calculations of the initial neutrino flux in long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments [5,6,7,8] as well as for more reliable simulations of cosmic-ray air showers [9,10].An interpretation of the rich experimental results on nucleus–nucleus collisions relies to a large extent on a comparison to the corresponding data on p+p and p+A interactions
This paper presents experimental results on inclusive spectra and mean multiplicities of negatively charged pions produced in inelastic p+p interactions at 20, 31, 40, 80 and 158 GeV/c
Detailed measurements of hadron spectra in a large acceptance in the beam momentum range covered by the data presented in this paper exist only for inelastic p+p interactions at 158 GeV/c [11,12,13]
Summary
In addition to the ion programme, NA61/SHINE is conducting precise hadron production measurements for improving calculations of the initial neutrino flux in long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments [5,6,7,8] as well as for more reliable simulations of cosmic-ray air showers [9,10]. Interactions in the target are selected by the trigger system by an anti-coincidence of the incoming beam protons with a small, 2 cm diameter, scintillation counter (S4) placed on the beam trajectory between the two vertex magnets (see Fig. 1). The resolution was calculated as the FWHM of the distribution of the difference between the generated and reconstructed y and pT These results were obtained for negatively charged pions passing the track selection criteria described in Sect. (iv) losses of inelastic p+p interactions as well as of negatively charged pions produced in accepted interactions due to the trigger and the event and track selection criteria employed in the analysis These steps are described in the successive subsections. Corrections as well as statistical and systematic uncertainties were calculated for each bin
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