Analysis of nuclear interactions of energies between 1000 and 100 000 BeV

Twenty nuclear interactions produced by protons and ten produced by α-particles of energies above 1000 Bev have been analysed. The proportion of pions amongst the secondaries is found to be 80% for the core and less than 70% for the wide angle tracks. The average transverse momentum resulting from our measurements is pT=0.5 Bev/e for pions and pT=l-2 Bev/c for heavy particles. It appears to be independent of angle of emission and primary energy. The multiplicity of the interaction, ns shows no variation with primary energy; it varies, however, with the anisotropy of the angular distribution, and shows wide fluctuations at a fixed primary energy. The inelasticity, K, of the collisions is close to unity for secondary interactions of mean energy ∼100 Bev and about 0.2 for jets produced by protons of energy ∼10 000 Bev. At a fixed energy, K does not appear to be strongly dependent on ns. None of the current theories appears capable of giving a satisfactory explanation of the experimental results, and an alternative model is proposed.