AN EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL STUDY OF CHARMED AND STRANGE HADRON PRODUCTION IN ANTINEUTRINO AND NEUTRINO CHARGED CURRENT INTERACTIONS AT HIGH ENERGIES

In this thesis we analyze the production of charmed particles and strange neutral hadrons by neutrinos and antineutrinos from two points of view. We discuss a phenomenological basis for the proposition that a suppression is likely for the production of charmed quarks. We also present an analysis of (mu)('-)e('+) data from the Columbia-Brookhaven group collected from (nu)-Neon scattering and show that these data provide the first evidence supporting this contention. We use this approach throughout the subsequent analysis in which we discuss a method for enhancing charmed particle production and two methods of determining the strange quark sea in the nucleon.

We further describe in detail an experiment done at Fermilab which

studied the reaction (nu)p(--->)(mu)('+)X('0). In particular, this thesis discusses these events which contain neutral strange particles and gamma rays. Results from the theoretical sections are used to analyze these data to show that K(,s)('0) production occurs within a fragmentation model at a rate which is in agreement with the electroproduction experiment of Cornell, DESY, Hamburg and Ithaca and that a significant portion of events with strange particles come from charmed hadron production. One of the theoretical schemes for measuring the strange quark content of the proton is utilized with the suggestion that this sea component is significantly larger than earlier believed.