Spatial-temporal development of hadron-nucleus collisions

Abstract

In contrast to the usual S-matrix approach where only asymptotic reaction products are considered, we study the spatial-temporal development of hadronic reactions following Feinberg. Certain features of the development are generally applicable to a wide variety of reactions. The crucial aspect is the modification of the interactions which take place in rapid succession. The time scales involved make the effect practically unobservable except in nuclear hadronic cascades. After demonstrating the nature of the modifications in solvable models we apply it to hadronic cascades and obtain a good fit to the data on pion production in hadron-nucleus collision at incident projectile energies of 50, 100, and 200 GeV. This good fit is obtained without the use of any free parameters.