LONGITUDINAL PHASE SPACE ANALYSIS OF 3-BODY FINAL STATES IN MESON-NUCLEON COLLISIONS

The longitudinal phase-space analysis is applied to various three-body final states of meson-nucleon collisions at 5-16 GeV/c primary momentum. The distributions of the angle ω along the hexagonal phase space plot and the dependence of average transverse momenta on ω are investigated in some detail. From the very rich structure of the ω distributions it is possible to conclude that, whenever allowed, the diffraction mechanism (single Pomeranchuk exchange) dominates the three-body reactions at high energy. The study of the transverse momentum distributions reveals the existence of strong correlations between longitudinal and transverse momenta which cannot be explained by phase-space effects. Some consequences of our analysis for the Regge-exchange models are briefly mentioned. © 1969.