Hadron Structure Explored in High-Energy Nuclear Reactions

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Abstract
Current data indicate that fast "excited hadrons," produced in high-energy collisions with nuclei, interact with the nuclear medium no more strongly than stable hadrons of the same internal quantum numbers. Considerations on the time development of excited hadron systems suggest that, in coherent nuclear production at any finite energy, the (indirectly) measured cross section of an excited hadron on a nucleon differs negligibly from its value immediately after production. Significant further information should be obtained from deep-inelastic lepton-nucleus collisions, but the results already found are most easily interpreted by supposing hadrons to be constructed from small or pointlike units, each of definite cross section, which do not have time to change in number during passage of a fast hadron through a nucleus.