Professor
Positive K-mesons are the most weakly interacting of the strongly interacting particles. There is a still unexplained discrepancy between experiment and theory, however, for their interaction with nuclei. One possible explanation involves meson exchange currents. I am trying to check some of the assumptions that go into the calculation of these contributions by looking at their effects in large-angle scattering from deuterons where they may dominate other contributions to the cross section. I am also trying to see if accurate measurements of the total cross sections for scattering of high-energy nucleons and pions from a range of heavy nuclei can be used to distinguish among different models describing the composite nature of these particles. With certain approximations each of these models corresponds to a prescription for a cross- section distribution function which specifies the probability that the particle is in a configuration which will interact with a nucleon with a given total cross section. Fluctuations between states of different cross sections decrease the total cross sections on heavy nuclei by an amount depending on the model used.
Revised September 28, 1995