Pion-Induced Pion Production on the Deuteron

Abstract

Doubly differential cross sections were measured for pion production in the reaction ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}d\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{nn}$ at 256 and 331 MeV and in ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}d\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}\mathrm{pp}$ at 256 MeV. At each incident energy observations were made at 35 to 40 points distributed uniformly over the center-of-momentum phase space of the produced pion. Comparison of these measurements with the cross sections for ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}n$ suggests that they are consistent with the dominance of quasifree production on a single nucleon. Upper limits for production of bound ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{nn}$ and ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}\mathrm{pp}$ systems were measured.