Intermediate-mass dimuon events at the CERN p collider at √s = 540 GeV

We report the observation of 21 dimuon events at the CERN p p Collider with the UA1 detector. The events range in invariant dimuon mass from 2 to 22 GeV / c 2 . The properties of these events are given. The bulk of the events are consistent with heavy-flavour production (mainly b b ) with a few candidates for Drell-Yan production. There remain a few events which are difficult to interpret in terms of these processes, in particular two events with isolated, like-sign muons.