STUDY OF HIGH TRANSVERSE ENERGY PROCESSES IN 400 GEV PROTON-NUCLEUS COLLISIONS

[摘要] Nuclear enhancement in high transverse energy hadron-nucleus scattering has intrigued the high energy physics community for a decade. The multiple scattering of the projectile and target constituents has been considered the cause of the enhancement. A study has been made of 400 GeV proton-nucleus collisions using a large acceptance calorimeter. The targets used were LH 2 , He, Be, C, Al, Cu, Sn and Pb. Two classes of geometrically unbiased triggers were utilized a large transverse energy, or global trigger and a trigger efficient at selecting jet events. It is found that the global events are dominated by a high multiplicity of low transverse momentum particles with a strongly enhanced A-dependence. The most jet-like events indicate that the naive dependence upon atomic number is approached.

[发布机构] Rice University

[效力级别] physics