On multiplicity of charged particles in hadron interactions at high energies

It has been shown that the regime of logarithmic growth of the mean multiplicity of charged particles, which is valid in the region of high energies, breaks down in the low-energy region, because the contributions from the preasymptotic terms turn out to be significant. The incorporation of these terms leads to the redetermination of the coefficient multiplying lnS. The value of this coefficient obtained from a fit to the experimental results including all the preasymptotic terms turns out to be considerably higher than that determined from the conventional logarithmic fit and is consistent with the results obtained earlier. It has been shown that the possible allowance for the mechanism of rapid increase in total cross sections does not alter the logarithmic behaviour of up to sufficiently high energies, due to a great reduction in the asymptotic terms. The asymptotic behaviour of approximately lnsup(ν+1)-S (at sigma sub(tot) approximately lnsup(ν) s) will be observed only at much higher energies than those attained with ISR