Composite Theory of Inclusive Scattering at Large Transverse Momenta

Abstract

The bound-state model which was previously used to describe elastic hadronic scattering is applied to the inclusive reactions $A+B\to C+X$. The force due to the interchange of common constituents is predicted to be the dominant interaction in inclusive reactions at large transverse momenta, just as it is in large-angle exclusive scattering. In the simplest cases the power-law falloff of the hadronic wave function allows us to introduce effective current operators which are the analogs of the lepton-photon current in deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering. Our predictions for the inclusive cross section take the form of a definite power of $s$ times a scale-invariant function of the remaining invariants which can be simply related to the structure function $\nu W_2\mathrm{}\left(x\right)\mathrm{}$ of the target. It is shown that in most cases our model predicts the same $s$ dependence at fixed missing mass for the incoherent back-ground as for the exclusive resonance contribution to the inclusive cross section. Results for several specific hadron- and photon-induced inclusive reactions are given.