Particle production yields induced by multi-GeV protons on nuclear targets

Abstract

In this study a first analysis is presented which extracts large-angle particle production rates from data taken by the HARP experiment. The analysis is carried out for nine different settings in order to compare the results in view of their dependence on the beam momentum and the target material. To achieve this goal, a fully-featured simulation for the relevant subdetector, the TPC, has been developed. This simulation was then used to unfold the measured momentum and angular distributions of secondaries. The unfolding scheme has been validated with simulated data. Due to the lack of particle identification at the time of this study, the results are not analysed in view of the best parameters for the target station of a Neutrino Factory. Nevertheless, the ratios and trends of the results presented here should already be reliable and have to be confirmed by future analyses. In addition, a comprehensive description of the HARP trigger and data acquisition system is given.