Rapidity dispersion analysis of individual events in π+p interactions at 8 to 23 GeV/c

Abstract An analysis has been performed of the dispersion of the rapidity spectrum of particles in individual events from well-identified exclusive channels of π + p interactions at 8, 16 and 23 GeV/ c . Emphasis is placed on testing the effectiveness of the method for separating different reaction mechanisms as a function of energy and multiplicity. By comparing data with simulated events generated according to transverse momentum limited phase space, we attempt to distinguish kinematical from dynamical features of the dispersion plots. The dispersion method isolates pion and baryon dissociation events fairly cleanly for sufficiently small masses of the excited systems.