Neutral strange particle production in π-p interactions at 100 GeV/c

A hybrid bubble chamber--wide gap optical spark chamber experiment was performed at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to study π-p interactions at 100 GeV/c. Neutral strange particle production from this experiment is discussed. A sample of 12,500 photographs was examined, and 916 events were found upon which the spark chambers were triggered. Of these events 143 contained a ''vee'', the charged decay of a neutral particle or a γ conversion to an e+e- pair. The rapidity distributions of the K0/sub s/, LAMBDA0, and π/sup +-/ particles were studied to search for correlation between the emission of a neutral strange particle and a charged pion. Also, effective mass distributions of (K0/sub s/,π/sup +-/) and (LAMBDA0,π/sup +-/) pairs were examined to look for K* and Σ* resonance production. No correlations between the rapidity distributions of K0/sub s/ and π/sup +-/ were found. A slight correlation in the rapidity between LAMBDA0 and π/sup +-/ was observed. This correlation has the effect of shifting the LAMBDA0-π/sup +-/ rapidity gap distribution to a more negative region than expected from the single particle rapidity distributions. The effective mass distributions show no strong resonance signal, but there is an enhancement in the distribution at the position of the K*