Particle production in pi-minus proton interactions at 50 GeV/c

Final state particle production is analyzed for some 7300 π-p events at an incident beam momentum of 50 GeV/c from an experiment carried out using the Fermilab hybrid 30'' bubble chamber-proportional wire chamber spectrometer. Properties of multiparticle final states are studied and elastic and topological cross section results are presented. Data from the companion anti p p events in the same film are compared with the π-p data in terms of inclusive single particle production and resonance production and neutral strange particle production. It is attempted to confront the quark-parton model of hadrons and hadronic interactions: by studying the ratios of various particle types as a function of kinematic variables and of other accompanying final state particles which may have taken one or more of the original valence quarks of the incoming beam or target hadron; by studying the jet-like nature of the patterns of final state particle momenta; and by studying the charge distributions in the final state possibly arising from a quark-jet cascade. Jet-like properties of hadronic interactions are investigated, using the above data as well as data from an earlier experiment done in this laboratory using the same bubble chamber, 100 GeV/c π+p and pp interactions; comparisons of hadron-hadron reactions to e+e- collisions and to neutrino-proton scattering are made