Multiplicities of charged hadrons in 280 GeV/c muon-proton scattering

Abstract Properties of the hadron multiplicity distributions in 280 GeV/ c μ + p interactions have been investigated. The c.m. energy dependence in the range from 4 to 20 GeV of the total charged multiplicities are presented. No variation faster than logarithmic is seen in the energy range of this experiment. Comparison with ν p and ν p data at lower energy has been made and shows good agreement between μ + p and ν p total charged multiplicities. It has been found that the average forward multiplicity (charged hadrons with x F > 0) exceeds the average backward multiplicity (charged hadrons with x F + e − data and shows a similar dependence on energy. Little correlation was observed between the forward and backward multiplicities indicating that the current and target regions fragment almost independently.