Production of hadrons at large transverse momentum at 200, 300, and 400 GeV

We have measured, as a function of transverse momentum ($p_{\perp }$), the invariant cross section $\frac{\mathrm{Ed}\sigma }{d^{3}p}$ for the production of ${\pi }^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$, $p$, $\overline{p}$, $d$, and $\overline{d}$ in proton collisions with a tungsten (W) target at incident proton energies of 200, 300, and 400 GeV. The measurements were made in the region of 90° in the c.m. system of the incident proton and a single nucleon at rest. Measurements were also made with 300-GeV protons incident on Be, Ti, and W targets of equal interaction length. These $p$-nucleus measurements, which show a strong dependence on atomic number at high $p_{\perp }$, were used to extract effective proton-nucleon cross sections by extrapolation to atomic number unity. At large values of the scaling variable $x_{\perp }=2\mathrm{}\frac{p_{\perp }}{\sqrt{s}}$, where $s$ is the square of the c.m. energy, the pion data are found to be well represented by the expression ${\left(\sqrt{s}\right)}^{-n}{e}^{-{\mathrm{ax}}_{\perp }}$, with $n=11.0\mathrm{}\pm 0.4$ and $a=36.0\mathrm{}\pm 0.4$. $x_{\perp }<0.35\mathrm{}$, where similar measurements have been made at the CERN ISR, our data are in good agreement with the ISR data.