Observations on the nuclear interaction of cosmic ray pions and nucleons of energies ≳ 20 GeV. Part I. Experimental details and results relating to fluctuations in the angular distribution of the secondary particles produced in interactions in carbon

Abstract

In this paper, which is the first of a series entitled 'Observations on the Nuclear Interactions of Cosmic Ray Pions and Nucleons of Energy ≳ 20 GeV', a description is given of the experimental arrangement, the types of data collected and the methods employed to analyse and classify the data. Results on the fluctuations in the angular distribution of the secondary particles produced in interactions in carbon are also presented and it is shown that these fluctuations are considerably larger in certain cases than what can be accounted for purely from statistical fluctuations in the isotropic and uncorrelated emission of secondaries in the c.m. system of the collision with a target nucleon and in others difficult to be understood on this basis if additional features of these interactions are also considered. It is suggested that 'correlated emission' of secondaries possibly due to final state inter-actions or multiparticle resonances with different 'Q-values' and other properties are perhaps the cause of the observed fluctuations; this is in contrast to the explanation in terms of simple motion of 'fire balls' in the c.m. system as has been generally discussed.