A hypothesis of limiting fragmentation of the target and of the projectile in a high-energy lepton-hadron or hadron-hadron collision is defined. Arguments are given for the hypothesis. Comparisons with various models and concepts are made. Further speculations are made, including the absence of pionization processes in high-energy collisions and the dependence of multiplicity on the momentum transfer. Experiments are suggested.

A concept of partition temperature is introduced in high-energy collisions. It is a natural mathematical consequence of the Darwin-Fowler method, and neither requires nor implies thermal equilibrium. A collision at a given incoming energy is described as an incoherent superposition of collisions with different partition temperatures. Angular distributions are then presented for Vs = 540 GeV collisions.

A comprehensive study (TEM, MFM, AFM, XRD, Recording Performance and Magnetometry) of media noise mechanisms and their relation to grain structure is reported for model, high noise contrast, CoCrPtTa thin films. The CoCrPtTa media were sputtered on to either CrMn or NiAIKrMn underlayers causing a change in media noise power of 9dB. The changes in media noise are not related to the topography of the underlayer(s) or due to interaction effects, which the 6M technique suggests are negligible in these model samples. A quantitative correlation is obtained between magnetic cluster size and media noise using an analytical first approximation of Zhou and Bertram's micromagnetic model.

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