Meson production in relativistic-heavy-ion collisions

The inclusive kappa/sup +/ production cross sections were measured at angles from 15 to 80/sup 0/ in collisions of protons (2.1 GeV) and deuterons (2.1 GeV/amu) on NaF and Pb, and Ne (2.1 GeV/amu) on C, NaF, KCl, Cu, and Pb. The kaons were identified by measuring the time of flight and the momentum in a magnetic spectrometer, and by detecting the particles from the kaon decays in a Pb glass Cerenkov counter. The momentum range of the detected kaons extended from 350 MeV/c to 750 MeV/c. The multiplicity of each event was measured by a set of scintillation counter telescopes which were situated around the target. The differential cross section of the kaons falls off exponentially with center of mass energy in the nucleon nucleon center of mass frame. In addition, the angular distribution of the kaons is nearly isotropic in this frame even for p/sup -1/ NaF and Ne/sup -1/ Pb collisions. The data are compared with a row on row model and a thermal model. Neither are able to explain all features of the data. The row on row model does not reproduce the near isotropy in the nucleon nucleon frame, and the thermal model overpredicts the kaon yield by a factor of approximately twenty