Characteristics of albedo particles generated in interactions of cosmic-ray hadrons

The Pion installation, which combines a multimodule detector of x-ray transition radiation with an ionization calorimeter, has been used to investigate the characteristics of particles traveling backward in the lab: albedo particles, generated by cosmic-ray hadrons with energy 0.5--5.0 TeV in interactions with nuclei of lead and iron. The principal features of the albedo effect are as follows: the angular distribution of the backward-traveling particles has a tendency to rise at angles near 180/sup 0/; albedo particles from great depths in matter (>100 g/cm/sup 2/) have a hadronic nature; the intensity of the particles depends on the sign of the charge of the primary hadron; the average multiplicity of the particles increases with increase of the energy of the primary hadron.