Observation of Hadronic Charm Production in a High Resolution Streamer Chamber Experiment

Short-lived particles produced in association with muons have been observed in the interactions of 350-GeV/c protons with neon in a high-resolution streamer chamber. The characteristics of these events are consistent with the expected properties of charmed particles if the average lifetime lies between 10/sup -13/ and 2 x 10/sup -12/ sec. With the assumption that the observed events are mainly D/sup + -/ mesons with lieftimes of approximately 10/sup -12/ sec, the production cross section is estimated to lie between 20 and 50 ..mu..b per nucleon.