Eur. Phys. J. C (2007) 52: 29-53
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0382-8

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Measurement of the production cross-section of positive pions in the collision of 8.9 GeV/c protons on beryllium

¹ Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Bari, Italy
² Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, UK
³ Institut für Physik, Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany
⁴ Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR Dubna, Dubna, Russia
⁵ Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Ferrara, Italy
⁶ CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
⁷ Section de Physique, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
⁸ Institut für Physik, Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany
⁹ University of Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan
¹⁰ Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro dell’ INFN, Legnaro, Italy
¹¹ Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA
¹² Institut de Physique Nucléaire, UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
¹³ Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy
¹⁴ Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow, Russia
¹⁵ P.N. Lebedev Institute of Physics (FIAN), Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
¹⁶ Università “Federico II” e Sezione INFN, Napoli, Italy
¹⁷ Columbia University, New York, USA
¹⁸ Nuclear and Astrophysics Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
¹⁹ Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Padova, Italy
²⁰ LPNHE, Universités de Paris VI et VII, Paris, France
²¹ Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino, Russia
²² Università “La Sapienza” e Sezione INFN Roma I, Roma, Italy
²³ Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN Roma III, Roma, Italy
²⁴ Dept. of Physics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
²⁵ Faculty of Physics, St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria
²⁶ Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
²⁷ Università degli Studi e Sezione INFN, Trieste, Italy
²⁸ Instituto de Física Corpuscular, IFIC, CSIC and Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
²⁹ FNAL, Batavia, Illinois, USA
³⁰ Codian Ltd., Langley, Slough, UK
³¹ University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
³² Imperial College, University of London, London, UK
³³ Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Univ. de Cantabria, Santander, Spain
³⁴ SpinX Technologies, Geneva, Switzerland
³⁵ TRIUMF, Vancouver, Canada
³⁶ University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
³⁷ Ecoanalitica, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
³⁸ Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey
³⁹ III Phys. Inst. B, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
⁴⁰ INFN, Sezione di Ferrara, Italy
⁴¹ CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
⁴² Univerity of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
⁴³ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
⁴⁴ Section de Physique, Université de Genève, Geneve, Switzerland
⁴⁵ Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK
⁴⁶ University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
⁴⁷ ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands

^* e-mail: gomez@mail.cern.ch

Received: 13 February 2007
Revised: 27 June 2007
Published online: 7 August 2007

Abstract

The double-differential production cross-section of positive pions, , measured in the HARP experiment is presented. The incident particles are 8.9 GeV/c protons directed onto a beryllium target with a thickness of 5% of a nuclear interaction length. The measured cross-section has a direct impact on the prediction of neutrino fluxes for the MiniBooNE and SciBooNE experiments at Fermilab. After cuts, 13 million protons on target produced about 96000 reconstructed secondary tracks which were used in this analysis. Cross-section results are presented in the kinematic range 0.75 GeV/c≤p_π≤ 6.5 GeV/c and 30 mrad≤θ_π≤ 210 mrad in the laboratory frame.