GROSS AND FINE STRUCTURE OF PION PRODUCTION EXCITATION FUNCTIONS IN P-NUCLEUS AND NUCLEUS-NUCLEUS REACTIONS

Slow ramping of the CELSIUS storage ring has been utilized to measure the yield of charged pions in proton and heavy ion induced collisions with continuously varying beam energy. Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck predictions, including Fermi momenta of nucleons in nuclei, follow the general shape of the p-nucleus excitation functions quite well except for a general overestimation of the backward emission. For heavy ion reactions the calculated yield also falls off faster with decreasing beam energy than the data. No statistically significant narrow resonances are observed. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}