Energy Dependence of Multi-Pion Production in High-Energy Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions

Abstract

Exclusive ${\pi }^{-}$ and charged-particle production in collisions of Ar+KCl is studied at incident energies from 0.4 to 1.8 GeV/u. Complete disintegration of both nuclei is observed. The correlation between ${\pi }^{-}$ and total charge multiplicity shows no islands of anomalous pion production. For constant numbers of proton participants the ${\pi }^{-}$ multiplicity distributions are Poissons. For central collisions $〈n_{{\pi }^{-}}〉$ increases smoothly and to first order linearly with the c.m. energy. Disagreement with the firestreak model is found.