Measurement of the elastic cross section for positive pions on carbon at 142 MeV

Abstract

A measurement of the elastic cross section dsigma/d..cap omega.. was made for the reaction ..pi../sup +/ + /sup 12/C ..-->.. ..pi../sup +/ + /sup 12/C with 142 MeV pions at ten angles ranging from 35 to 85/sup 0/ in the laboratory. This experiment was done at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. A double focusing magnetic spectrometer observed a cylindrical styrofoam target. The resulting momentum spectra were recorded by an array of nineteen totally depleted surface barrier detectors located at the spectrometer's focal plane. The spectra from the styrofoam were composed of peaks representing proton elastic, carbon elastic, carbon inelastic, and carbon quasi-elastic channels. A function made of Gaussians representing the two body channels and a distribution representing the quasi-elastic channel was fit to the data using a nonlinear least squares algorithm. The ratio of the carbon elastic to proton elastic cross sections was calculated from the areas of the corresponding Gaussians and then multiplied by the proton elastic cross section of Bugg et al eliminating several sources of systematic errors such as beam normalization. The differential cross sections were found to have the usual diffraction structure with a forward peak and a minimum near 55/sup 0/. Finally, the carbon elastic cross sections were compared to similar ..pi../sup -/ + /sup 12/C cross sections of Binon et al using the optical model.