Energy and momentum distributions of hadrons produced in inelastic muon-proton scattering

Abstract

We present inclusive distributions for final-state hadrons produced in inelastic muon-proton scattering. Over the total energy range $2<W<4.7$ GeV and the momentum-transfer range $0.3<{Q}^{2}<4.5$ Ge${\mathrm{V}}^{2}$, the fractional momentum and energy distributions approximately scale. Distributions in transverse momentum display an interesting two-component behavior. They show no dependence on the virtual-photon "mass squared" ${Q}^{2}$, and have average values typical of other hadron-initiated reactions. A comparison of our distributions with those seen in ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ annihilation and neutrino-nucleon scattering shows agreement, in support of quark-parton fragmentation ideas. We further break these distributions down by event topology.