Particle Production Models, Sampling High-Energy Multiparticle Events from Inclusive Single-Particle Distributions

The experimental or theoretical knowledge about particle production in high-energy hadron-hadron collisions is limited to inclusive single- (and perhaps two-) particle cross-sections. In hadronic cascade calculations, complete realistic multiparticle production events are sampled which should agree with these single-particle distributions, fulfil energy-momentum conservation and other conservation laws, have a multiplicity distribution which agrees with data, etc. Different strategies for sampling these events are discussed. The present experimental knowledge about particle production in high-energy (10 GeV – 2 TeV) hadron-hadron collisions as well as theoretical models are also discussed. The particle production in hadron-nucleus collisions is extremely important for all hadron cascade calculations, but experimental data in the GeV to TeV energy region are rather incomplete. An extension of the computer program SPUKST is described, which predicts these particle spectra from hadron-hadron data using a recently proposed model for particle production on nuclei.