The Main Injector Particle Production Experiment

It is currently impossible to apply the theory of strong interactions, QCD, to compute non-perturbative hadron interaction cross sections from first principles. Thus high quality hadronic particle production measurements are needed to fully understand the data from experiments that have hadronic interactions as a signal or background. This includes atmospheric and accelerator neutrino experiments, calorimetry and hadronic shower simulation. Such data can also be used to test observed regularities in particle production such as scaling relations in inclusive reactions with some precision. The spectrum of baryon resonances predicted by QCD includes many states that have not been observed. Measurements of pion, kaon, and proton beams on a liquid hydrogen target at beam momenta around 1 GeV/c will provide important input to searches for missing baryon resonances. We review status, results, and prospects of particle production measurements at Fermilab.