MULTIPARTICLE REACTIONS ON DEUTERONS

The deuteron is a weakly bound system with a rather large internucleon distance. This allows one to utilize the would-be spectator nucleon as a probe of how the formation of the secondary particles produced on the first nucleon proceeds. The main features of the rescattering events, when both nucleons take part in the interaction, turn out to be very sensitive to the multiple production mechanisms. In this paper we develop the multi-peripheral parton model approach to the rescatterings in the multiple production off deuterons. We discuss: (i) the single-particle inclusive spectra in the rescattering events; (ii) the influence of the rescatterings on the two-particle correlations; (iii) the multiplicity distributions and the KNO scaling in the rescattering events; (iv) the transverse momentum distributions in the rescattering events. The results obtained suggest that a study of the rescattering events provides us with a unique possibility to get information on the space-time picture of the collision processes at high energies. The experimental data available on the subject give strong evidence for the existence of the large formation lengths of the secondary particles. © 1979.