NEW CONSTRAINTS ON THE DELTA-PRODUCTION CROSS-SECTION

Recent measurements of proton spectra issued from neutron beam interac tions with a hydrogen target in the 0.2-1.6 GeV range are exploited to perform a new analysis of the bulk of the available appropriate data and to extract from the latter the Delta-production cross section and related parameters. Among these, the slope parameter of the angular di stribution is accurately determined and shown to be close to the slope parameter for pp elastic scattering for incident momentum larger than approximately 1.4 GeV/c. Constraints introduced by isospin conservati on are also briefly discussed.