Observation of color-transparency in diffractive dissociation of pions

E791 Collaboration, E. M. Aitala

Published 2000-10-17Version 1

We have studied the diffractive dissociation into di-jets of 500 GeV/c pions scattering coherently from carbon and platinum targets. Extrapolating to asymptotically high energies (where t_{min} approaches 0) we find that when the per-nucleus cross-section for this process is parameterized as $\sigma = \sigma_0 A^{\alpha}, \alpha$ has values near 1.6, the exact result depending on jet transverse momentum. These values are in agreement with those predicted by theoretical calculations of color-transparency.