Study of the production of rho/sup 0/ and. omega. mesons in pion-nucleon interactions at p = 40 GeV/c

The production of rho/sup 0/ and ..omega.. resonances in ..pi../sup -/p and ..pi../sup -/n interactions is investigated at p = 40 GeV/c. It is found that the cross sections for production of these resonances are approximately the same and depend weakly on the type of target (p or n). The average multiplicity of rho/sup 0/ or ..omega.. mesons is 0.4--0.5. The fraction of ..pi../sup -/ mesons produced from decays of these resonances is 27 +- 2% of all ..pi../sup -/ mesons. It is also shown that the distribution of rho/sup 0/ mesons in the square of the transverse momentum is satisfactorily fitted by an exponential with B = 2.7 +- 0.3 (GeV/c)/sup -2/ and B = 3.0 +- 0.4 (GeV/c)/sup -2/ for ..pi../sup -/p and ..pi../sup -/n interactions, respectively. The main contribution to the rho/sup 0/-meson cross section is from the central region and the pion-fragmentation region.