Inelastic interaction of 32-GeV/c muons with emulsion nuclei at Q2<1 (GeV/c)2, #betta#<2 GeV

A study has been made of the inelastic interaction of 32-GeV/c muons with the nuclei of a photographic emulsion. It is shown on the basis of 169 selected events that the admixture of background stars does not exceed 10%. The total cross section for the inelastic interaction is 16.4 +- 2.2 μb/nucleon. The dependence of the cross section on the square of the 4-momentum transfer is reported. The cross sections for the production of pions and kaons are determined: 2.3 +- 1.0 and 5.1 +- 1.6 μb/nucleon, respectively. The angular and energy characteristics of the pions, kaons, and protons, the multiplicities of s, g, b, and h particles, and the dependence of the s-particle multiplicity on the number of highly ionizing h particles have all been measured. The behavior of these characteristics as functions of the parameters Q2 and x = Q2/2M#betta# is analyzed