High Yield of Low-Energy Pions from a High-Energy Primary Proton Beam

We present the results of the first measurement on the yield of pions with momentum smaller than 220 MeV/c, produced by a 300 GeV/c proton beam. The measurements, performed at the CERN super proton synchrotron using tungsten production targets of different lengths, are discussed referring to the possibility of extending to high-energy laboratories the access to fundamental research involving low-energy pions and muons.