GLOBAL TRANSVERSE ENERGY-DISTRIBUTIONS IN RELATIVISTIC NUCLEAR COLLISIONS AT 14.6A GEV/C

A systematic set of measurements of the global transverse energy distributions, d-sigma/dE(T) and dE(T)/d-eta, from beams of protons, O-16 and Si-28 at 14.6A GeV/c, incident on targets ranging from Be to Au is presented. The detector was a semicircular array of lead-glass blocks, covering polar angles 9-degrees < theta < 32-degrees, whose total response provides a good measure of the produced particle yield in the central rapidity region of these reactions. Proton-nucleus spectra exhibit a similar shape on the high-energy tail, independent of target, suggesting that produced particles in such events arise mostly from the first collision of the projectile proton. For targets heavier than Cu, the high-energy edges of the oxygen-nucleus spectra, and of the silicon-nucleus spectra, reach ratios consistent with the geometry of central collisions. Angular distributions, dE(T)/d-eta, are characterized by Gaussian fits, and an acceptance-independent form of the differential cross section is found, based on the maximum value of dE(T)/d-eta. The projectile dependence of nucleus-nucleus spectra is studied in terms of two very different models: simple energy scaling and the wounded projectile nucleon model of p+A convolutions.