Backward production of pions and kaons in the interaction of 400 GeV protons with nuclei

Charged pion production in p+C collisions at 158 GeV/c beam momentum: Discussion

“…At this momentum the intranuclear pion production yield is already reduced and only small if any cascading contributions are to be expected from this kinematic fact alone. This argument can however be quantified by making use of the measurements of Nikiforov et al [23] at Fermilab with a beam momentum of 400 GeV/c. This important and unique experiment covers the backward region in the second hatched area indicated in Fig.…”

“…As the experimental layout of the experiment [23] does not allow a discrimination of offvertex tracks it must however be expected that the complete feed-down from weak decays of strange particles is contained in the data at these low total momenta. A feed-down correction has therefore been calculated and applied following the methodology developed for the NA49 data [3].…”

Inclusive production of charged pions in p + C collisions at 158 GeV/c beam momentum

“…It is nevertheless possible to use the grey proton information in a sample of p T integrated inclusive cross sections in order to study the evolution with centrality as described in Sect. 8.…”

“…The first data set at 400 GeV/c beam momentum covers the far backward region at a number of fixed laboratory angles [8], yielding important information about the region of intranuclear cascading. The second one presents a small number of data points in the far forward region [7].…”

“…These restrictions concern both the beam availability and the choice of topics in hadronic physics acceptable to the relevant committee [6]. In view of the almost total absence of existing data in the SPS energy range [7,8] the NA49 results nevertheless constitute a unique extension of the present knowledge in the sector of p+A interactions with light nuclei.…”