High energy collisions with the production of meson showers

Abstract

Eighteen events of meson showers produced in high energy collisions have been analyzed to study the mechanism of the production of mesons. The angles ψ of the mesons have been measured relative to the primary direction or relative to the shower axis for neutron induced showers. The mean value of cosψ, <cosψ>_Av, has been plotted against the number N of the mesons produced. It is found that the observed points can be divided into three regions corresponding to single, double, and triple collisions inside the nucleus. The points representing single collisions lie considerably below the theoretical curve of Heisenberg for completely inelastic collisions and it is concluded that in these collisions only a fraction (1/K) of the incident energy goes to the meson production. For these events the values of K and primary energy E_p have been estimated by applying Heisenberg's theory to partially inelastic collisions. For double and triple collision events the number of mesons produced in successive collisions inside the nucleus has been estimated from the angular dispersions of the single collision events.