Measurements of Production Properties of K0S mesons and Lambda hyperons in Proton-Carbon Interactions at 31 GeV/c

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of K0S mesons and Lambda hyperons produced in proton-carbon collisions at 31 GeV/c, providing data crucial for understanding strangeness enhancement, neutrino flux predictions, and validating hadron production models.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed measurements of K0S and Lambda production cross sections and multiplicities in p+C interactions at 31 GeV/c, serving as reference data for multiple fields.

Findings

Measured inclusive production cross sections for K0S and Lambda.

Determined the mean multiplicity of K0S in production processes.

Compared experimental results with several hadron production models.

Abstract

Spectra of K0S mesons and Lambda hyperons were measured in p+C interactions at 31 GeV/c with the large acceptance NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS. The data were collected with an isotropic graphite target with a thickness of 4% of a nuclear interaction length. Interaction cross sections, charged pion spectra, and charged kaon spectra were previously measured using the same data set. Results on K0S and Lambda production in p+C interactions serve as reference for the understanding of the enhancement of strangeness production in nucleus-nucleus collisions. Moreover, they provide important input for the improvement of neutrino flux predictions for the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan. Inclusive production cross sections for K0S and Lambda are presented as a function of laboratory momentum in intervals of the laboratory polar angle covering the range from 0 up to 240 mrad. The results are compared with predictions of several hadron production models. The K0S mean multiplicity in production processes <n_K0S> and the inclusive cross section for K0S production were measured and amount to 0.127 +- 0.005 (stat) +- 0.022 (sys) and 29.0 +- 1.6 (stat) +- 5.0 (sys) mb, respectively.