Multiple Pion Production inπ-Ne Collisions at 10.5 and 200 GeV

Abstract

We have measured the multiplicities of pions produced in the collisions of $\pi$ mesons with neon nuclei at bombarding momenta of 10.5 and 200 GeV/c. The diffractive production of pions is clearly separable. If one excludes the diffractive part, the pion multiplicity obeys the same Koba-Nielsen-Olesen scaling as found previously for ${\pi }^{-}-p$ collisions. This fact would seem to indicate the validity of an energy-flux or collective-variable description of the production process. A surprisingly large number of energetic protons (> 1 GeV/c lab momentum) are found to be produced in $\pi$-Ne collisions.