Inclusive particle production at forward angles from collisions of light relativistic nuclei: Negative pions

We have measured single particle inclusive spectra of negative pions produced at angles from 0° to 12° (lab) in collisions of 1.05 and 2.1 GeV/nucleon protons, deuterons, alpha particles, and carbon nuclei with targets of C, Cu, Pb, and H (from a C${\mathrm{H}}_2$—C subtraction). Most of the pions are produced in the kinematical domains allowed in free nucleon-nucleon collisions, but for alpha and carbon projectiles we have also observed pions whose energies range up to nearly twice the kinetic energy of a nucleon in the projectile. Our results suggest that processes involving more than two colliding nucleons and/or high internal momentum components are involved in the production of these high energy pions. Comparison is made with several hypotheses of scaling including specific dynamical models, and some disagreement is observed. We present fits to the kinetic energy dependence of the data, and the target and projectile mass dependence. We also show transverse momentum distributions.