Pion Deuteron Breakup Reaction

In experiment E721 final state $\pi\sp+$ and p from the reaction $\pi \sp+d\to\pi\sp+pn$ were detected in coincidence in the CHAOS spectrometer at TRIUMF. This thesis describes the goals and setup of the experiment, analysis of the data taken in summer 1995, calibrations of the spectrometer hardware, reconstruction of a a resonance from the pion and proton, calculation of the delta cross- section for a $\pi\sp+d\to\Delta\sp{++}n$ reaction for two pion incident beam energies: T$\sb{\pi}$ = 256 MeV and T$\sb{\pi}$ = 140 Me V and calculation of the triple differential cross-sections for coincident $\pi\sp+$p angular pairs for both energies. The cross-section results $\rm(d\sigma/d\Omega\sb{\Delta})$ are calculated in the laboratory reference frame based on the normalization and yields extracted by analyzing the data on an event by event basis and the spectrometer acceptance which was determined for the pion deuteron breakup reaction. There were 87 individual data sets, or runs, analyzed for the 256 MeV data set and 89 runs for the 140 MeV set in order to minimize the magnitude of the statistical errors, especially in the region of backward moving deltas. The comparison of the delta cross-section for both energies to the theoretical calculation done by Valcarce et al. was made in the $\pi \sp+$d center of mass frame