BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COLLISION OF HIGH-ENERGY NUCLEONS

Acconding to present concepts of nucleon-nucleon collisions, the nucleons may pass into an isobaric state with a subsequent emission of a meson. Under experimental conditions, a meson emitted by a high-energy nucleon possesses about 15 to 20% of the energy of the original nucleon. As a result of the rapidly decreasing spectrum of the primary cosmic rays, the contribution of fast pi -mesons in a fiux of n-mesons of a given energy to the total energy is higher than that of the more numerous slow mesons, It was established that the coefficient of inelasticity is independent from the energy of the colliding nucleons within the wide range of 3 x 10/sup 16/ to 10/sup 14/ ev. The collision process of highenergy nucleons may be divided in 2 stages: a first stage, corresponding to the collision proper, which has a quantic character and is accompanied by the formation of an excited meson cloud and nucleon; and a second stage involving expansion and decay of the system, resulting in the generation of slow pi -mesons. High-energy nucleons with E/sub 0/ > 3 x 10/sup 10/ ev usually enter into purely peripheral collisions. Excited meson clusters decay isotropically, generating low energy, 0.5-Bev pimore » -mesons. The pi -mesons interact strongly with each other, forming excited meson masses, although the probability of forming masses higher than 2 to 4 x 10/sup 9/ ev/c decreases with increasing energy. (TTT)« less