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Measurement of the production of charged pions by protons on a tantalum target

  • Regular Article - Experimental Physics
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Abstract

A measurement of the double-differential cross-section for the production of charged pions in proton–tantalum collisions emitted at large angles from the incoming beam direction is presented. The data were taken in 2002 with the HARP detector in the T9 beam line of the CERN PS. The pions were produced by proton beams in a momentum range from 3 GeV/c to 12 GeV/c hitting a tantalum target with a thickness of 5% of a nuclear interaction length. The angular and momentum range covered by the experiment (100 MeV/c ≤p< 800 MeV/c and 0.35 rad ≤θ< 2.15 rad) is of particular importance for the design of a neutrino factory. The produced particles were detected using a small-radius cylindrical time projection chamber (TPC) placed in a solenoidal magnet. Track recognition, momentum determination and particle identification were all performed based on the measurements made with the TPC. An elaborate system of detectors in the beam line ensured the identification of the incident particles. Results are shown for the double-differential cross-sections d2σ/dpdθ at four incident proton beam momenta (3 GeV/c, 5 GeV/c, 8 GeV/c and 12 GeV/c). In addition, the pion yields within the acceptance of typical neutrino factory designs are shown as a function of beam momentum. The measurement of these yields within a single experiment eliminates most systematic errors in the comparison between rates at different beam momenta and between positive and negative pion production.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Bari, Italy

    M.G. Catanesi & E. Radicioni

  2. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, UK

    R. Edgecock, M. Ellis, S. Robbins & F.J.P. Soler

  3. Institut für Physik, Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    C. Gößling

  4. Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR, Dubna, Russia

    S. Bunyatov, A. Krasnoperov, B. Popov, V. Serdiouk & V. Tereschenko

  5. Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Ferrara, Italy

    E. Di Capua & G. Vidal-Sitjes

  6. CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

    P. Arce, A. Artamonov, S. Giani, S. Gilardoni, P. Gorbunov, A. Grant, A. Grossheim,  P. Gruber, V. Ivanchenko, A. Kayis-Topaksu, J. Panman, I. Papadopoulos, J. Pasternak, E. Tcherniaev, I. Tsukerman, R. Veenhof, C. Wiebusch, P. Zucchelli & S. Borghi

  7. Section de Physique, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland

    A. Blondel, S. Borghi, M. Campanelli, M.C. Morone, G. Prior, R. Schroeter & J.S. Graulich

  8. Institut für Physik, Forschungszentrum, Karlsruhe, Germany

    R. Engel & C. Meurer

  9. University of Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan

    I. Kato

  10. Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro dell’ INFN, Legnaro, Italy

    U. Gastaldi

  11. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA

    G.B. Mills

  12. Institut de Physique Nucléaire, UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    J.S. Graulich & G. Grégoire

  13. Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow, Russia

    M. Kirsanov

  14. Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy

    M. Bonesini, F. Ferri, M. Paganoni &  F. Paleari

  15. P.N. Lebedev Institute of Physics (FIAN), Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    A. Bagulya, V. Grichine & N. Polukhina

  16. Università “Federico II” e Sezione INFN, Napoli, Italy

    V. Palladino

  17. Columbia University, New York, USA

    L. Coney & D. Schmitz

  18. Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    G. Barr, A. De Santo, C. Pattison & K. Zuber

  19. Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Padova, Italy

    F. Bobisut, D. Gibin, A. Guglielmi & M. Mezzetto

  20. LPNHE, Universités de Paris VI et VII, Paris, France

    J. Dumarchez & F. Vannucci

  21. Università “La Sapienza” e Sezione INFN Roma I, Roma, Italy

    U. Dore

  22. Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN Roma III, Roma, Italy

    D. Orestano, F. Pastore, A. Tonazzo & L. Tortora

  23. Dept. of Physics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    C. Booth, C. Buttar, P. Hodgson & L. Howlett

  24. Faculty of Physics, St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria

    M. Bogomilov, M. Chizhov, D. Kolev & R. Tsenov

  25. Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

    S. Piperov & P. Temnikov

  26. Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Trieste, Italy

    M. Apollonio, P. Chimenti, G. Giannini & G. Santin

  27. Instituto de Física Corpuscular, IFIC, CSIC and Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    J. Burguet-Castell, A. Cervera-Villanueva, J.J. Gómez-Cadenas, J. Martín-Albo, P. Novella, M. Sorel & A. Tornero

  28. FNAL, Batavia, Illinois, USA

    M. Ellis

  29. Codian Ltd., Langley, Slough, UK

    S. Robbins

  30. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    F.J.P. Soler & C. Buttar

  31. Imperial College, University of London, London, UK

    G. Vidal-Sitjes

  32. Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Univ. de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

    P. Arce

  33. ITEP, Moscow, Russian Federation

    A. Artamonov, P. Gorbunov & I. Tsukerman

  34. SpinX Technologies, Geneva, Switzerland

    P. Gorbunov & P. Zucchelli

  35. TRIUMF, Vancouver, Canada

    A. Grossheim & I. Kato

  36. University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    P. Gruber

  37. Ecoanalitica, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

    V. Ivanchenko

  38. Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey

    A. Kayis-Topaksu

  39. III Phys. Inst. B, RWTH, Aachen, Germany

    C. Wiebusch

  40. INFN, Sezione di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    P. Zucchelli

  41. University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    M.C. Morone

  42. LBL, Berkeley, California, USA

    G. Prior & A. De Santo

  43. Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK

    K. Zuber

  44. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    G. Santin

  45. ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands

    G. Santin

Authors
  1. M.G. Catanesi
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  2. E. Radicioni
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  3. R. Edgecock
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  4. M. Ellis
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  6. F.J.P. Soler
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  7. C. Gößling
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  8. S. Bunyatov
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  9. A. Krasnoperov
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  11. V. Serdiouk
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  13. E. Di Capua
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  14. G. Vidal-Sitjes
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  19. P. Gorbunov
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  20. A. Grant
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  21. A. Grossheim
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The HARP Collaboration

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J.J. Gómez-Cadenas.

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PACS

13.75.Cs; 13.85.Ni

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Catanesi, M., Radicioni, E., Edgecock, R. et al. Measurement of the production of charged pions by protons on a tantalum target. Eur. Phys. J. C 51, 787–824 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0361-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0361-0

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