Inclusive Charged D Meson Production Cross-Section Measurement in 800 GEV Proton-Emulsion Interactions.
Abstract
This paper presents a preliminary cross section for the inclusive production of charged D mesons in proton -emulsion collisions at 800 GeV as measured in the hybrid emulsion spectrometer experiment 653 at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The apparatus making up the experiment is described in some detail, with special emphasis on the data acquisition system. The analysis performed to derive the charged D meson cross section is also detailed. A charged D meson invariant mass constructed from purely electronic spectrometer information was searched for in 61% of the data from the first running period of the experiment. This data sample corresponds to an emulsion exposure of approximately 1.5 times 10^9 incident protons, and 3.14 times 10^6 recorded triggers. A charged D meson signal of 14 _sp{-4}{+5} of which 12_sp{-4}{+5} was found to be consistent with the experiment's muon trigger yields a charged D meson cross section of: sigma (D^{+/-}) = 37_sp{-13}{+17} +/- 13 mub where a linear atomic weight dependence is assumed.
- Publication:
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Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- 1987
- Bibcode:
- 1987PhDT........32O
- Keywords:
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- Physics: Elementary Particles and High Energy