Contribution of inelastic rescattering to cumulative meson production

It is shown that the formation of large masses in the intermediate state in inelastic rescattering by deuteron nucleons leads to production of cumulative pions in the entire kinematically accessible region, particularly in the backward direction in the deuteron rest system. The contribution of the resonance and of multiparticle intermediate states to this process is estimated. It is shown that in contrast to the contribution of the resonance, the contribution of the multiparticle intermediate states is of the order of the experimental data. Since the principal contribution at high cumulativity is made by diagrams of the three-Reggeon type, in which pairs of ..delta.. or N Reggons branch away to the deuteron, the dependence of the cumulative cross section on the Feynman variable x near x=1 takes the form (1-x)/sup 2.4/.