Progress report of a research program in experimental high energy physics

The LVD Collaboration has made major progress during the past year in constructing the basic modules of the detector and installing them in five-tower LVD structure. Each of these modules consists of a portatank containing eight liquid scintillation counters (each 1.0m x 1.0m x 1.5m, viewed by three photomultipliers) totalling 9.6 tons of liquid scintillator and 6.7 tons of steel. Each portatank is covered on its bottom and one side by two layers of limited streamer tubes which form the tracking system of the detector. About half of the first tower has now been installed and initial data-taking with the entire tower is expected to being during the Fall of 1991. Data acquisition hardware and software are in place for this. The data-taking run of FNAL Experiment E782, a study of the interactions of 200 GeV muons in a hybrid system with the Tohoku Freon bubble chamber as visible target, was completed in August 1990. Film analysis is now in progress. The results will be readily comparable to those obtained in FNAL Experiment E745, a study of the interactions of muon neutrinos in a similar system. The film analysis of E745 has been completed, and some preliminary results are presented on the production of strange particles, based on the combined data of both the 1985 and 1987 runs of this experiment