Inclusive production of charged kaons in p+p collisions at?158?GeV/c?beam momentum and a new evaluation of the energy dependence of kaon production up to collider energies

摘要

New data on the production of charged kaons in p+p interactions are presented. The data come from a sample of 4.8 million inelastic events obtained with the NA49 detector at the CERN SPS at 158?GeV/c beam momentum. The kaons are identified by energy loss in a large TPC tracking system. Inclusive invariant cross sections are obtained in intervals from 0 to 1.7?GeV/c in transverse momentum and from 0 to 0.5 in Feynman x. Using these data as a reference, a new evaluation of the energy dependence of kaon production, including neutral kaons, is conducted over a range from 3?GeV to (mathrm{p}+overline{mathrm{p}}) collider energies.