Multiplicity structure of proton and kaon diffractive dissociation in 10 and 16 GeV/c K-p interactions

A new method to calculate diffractive mass spectra has been developed. It is applied to K - p interactions at 10 and 16 GeV/ c . Cross sections and mass spectra are given for the difractive dissociation processes p→(N+ iπ ) and K - p→(K+ iπ ) for i = 1 to 5 and also summed over all multiplicities. In addition to the diffractive peak at low mass coming from low multiplicities, a long tail extending to high masses and high multiplicities has been found. The multiplicity structure of diffraction dissociation can be understood in the context of the two-step dynamical picture of Pokorsky and Van Hove.