Production Spectrum of Mesons in High-Energy Nucleon-Nucleon Collisions

Abstract

In order to obtain a production spectrum of mesons in the center-of-mass system, three high-energy nuclear collisions were selected which satisfy very stringent criteria for nucleon-nucleon collisions and for which the momenta of all charged particles could be measured in the laboratory system. The results show that more than one-half of the mesons have energies less than 1 Bev in the center-of-mass system. Only a few particles emitted under very small angles in the forward and backward direction have higher energies, extending up to 10 Bev. The low-energy end of the spectrum is compared with results obtained in experiments with the Berkeley Bevatron.