Inclusive soft pion production from 12.3 and17.5 GeV/cprotons on Be, Cu, and Au

Abstract

Differential cross-sections are presented for the inclusive production of charged pions in the momentum range 0.1 to 1.2 GeV/c in interactions of 12.3 and 17.5 GeV/c protons with Be, Cu, and Au targets. The measurements were made by Experiment 910 at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron in Brookhaven National Laboratory. The cross-sections are presented as a function of pion total momentum and production polar angle θ with respect to the beam.

Pion production by protons and3He on a197Au target at beam energies of 2.8, 5, 10, and 16.587 GeV/nucleon

“…We can see that for both π − and π + , our results fit the E910 data very well, especially at higher momenta. Pion production of the p + Cu reaction at incident beam momenta of 12.3 and 17.5 GeV/c also fits the E910 data [14] very well. From Fig.…”

“…To check the reliability of using the ART model to study the cross sections of pion production in proton-or 3 He-induced reactions, we first made a comparison of pion production in p + Au reaction at an incident beam momentum of 17.5 GeV/c between the theoretical simulations and the E910 data [14] as shown in Fig. 1.…”

“…These pions then proceed into a decay channel where the resultant muon decay products are harvested before being conducted into a cooling channel and then subsequently accelerated to the final energy of the facility [13]. Understanding of the production of pions in proton interactions with nuclear targets is thus essential for determining the flux of neutrinos in acceleratorbased neutrino experiments [14,15]. A large amount of data was collected by the HARP Collaboration for the above physical subjects recently [16].…”

Comparison of large-angle production of charged pions with incident protons on cylindrical long and short targets

“…The large π − /π + ratio in the lowest bin of secondary momentum (100 MeV/c-150 MeV/c) for the heavy nuclear targets (Pb and Ta) in the beams with 8 GeV/c and 12 GeV/c momentum had already been observed in the short-target data. The E910 collaboration had made a similar observation for their lowest momentum bin (100 MeV/c -140 MeV/c) in p-Au collisions at 12.3 GeV/c and 17.5 GeV/c incoming beam momentum [34]. A plausible explanation has been put forward in Ref.…”

NEUTRINO FACTORY AND MUON COLLIDER R&D

“…To establish confidence in the predicted π ± fluxes downstream of the target several secondary particle pro- duction experiments are underway 15,16,17 .…”