Search for Charm in Hadronic Interactions Near Threshold.

A high energy physics experiment was done at the Brookhaven National Laboratory AGS to search for associated charm production near threshold via the reaction (UNFORMATTED TABLE FOLLOWS). (pi)('-)p (--->) D*('-)B(,c)('+) , B(,c)('+) = (LAMDA)(,c)('+), (SIGMA)(,c)('+), ... (')D('o)(pi)('-). K('+)(pi)('-). (TABLE ENDS). High sensitivity was realized by using an intense beam of 13 GeV/c pions (2 x 10('7)/sec) on a liquid hydrogen target and by detecting the decay fragments of the charmed meson in a large aperture proportional wire chamber spectrometer. This experiment set an upper limit of 10 nanobarns for the reaction cross section near threshold.