Search for charm particles in collisions between 200 GeV/c negative pions and beryllium nuclei

Thesis/Dissertation · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1983

OSTI ID:6900470

Pemper, R R

The intent of this thesis is to give an account of the research the author has been engaged in for the past 4 years while working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. This research involved an experiment in which a team of about 25 physicists investigated the production of charm particles in the strong interactions. The idea was to bombard beryllium nuclei with 200 GeV/c ..pi.. particles while taking data on only those collisions where a prompt muon originating from the point of interaction in the target was observed, i.e., chosen events favorable to charm production. The data was taken in May, 1981 after three years of preparation and consisted of 1.2 million raw triggered events of which 260,000 actually contained muons. Approximately 18% of these 260,000 prompt muon events possessed charm particle pairs. An excess of 388 ..mu.. +/- e +/- events was observed as a result of the semi-leptonic decays of these C anti C pairs. An independent check on the results of the ..mu..e data was obtained from a study of ..mu mu.. correlations. In addition to indirect evidence for charm production, a direct observation of the decay D/sup 0/(anti D/sup 0/) ..-->.. K +/- ..pi.. +/- was observed at the level of approx./=2.5 standard deviations. The charm production cross sections obtained were sigma/sub C anti C/ = 11.0 +/- 2.2 ..mu..b/nucleon based on the ..mu..e results and sigma/sub CD/sup 0// = 35 +/- 16 ..mu..b/nucleon based on the K..pi.. events. These values are in good agreement with the charm cross section measurements of other experiments in the range of Fermilab and CERN SPS accelerator energies.

• Research Organization: Notre Dame Univ., IN (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6900470
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

645104* -- High Energy Physics-- Particle Interactions & Properties-Experimental-- Strong Meson-Induced Interactions-- (-1987)
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
ACCELERATORS
ALKALINE EARTH METALS
BERYLLIUM
BOSONS
CHARGED-PARTICLE REACTIONS
CHARM PARTICLES
CROSS SECTIONS
CYCLIC ACCELERATORS
D-1285 RESONANCES
DATA
DECAY
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ELEMENTS
ENERGY RANGE
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FERMILAB ACCELERATOR
FERMIONS
GEV RANGE
GEV RANGE 100-1000
HADRON REACTIONS
HADRONIC PARTICLE DECAY
HADRONS
INFORMATION
LEPTONS
MESON REACTIONS
MESON RESONANCES
MESONS
METALS
MUONS
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
NUMERICAL DATA
PARTICLE DECAY
PARTICLE PRODUCTION
PION MINUS REACTIONS
PION REACTIONS
POSTULATED PARTICLES
RESONANCE PARTICLES
SEMILEPTONIC DECAY
SYNCHROTRONS
WEAK PARTICLE DECAY