PION-PION CORRELATIONS AT LOW RELATIVE MOMENTUM PRODUCED IN P-P COLLISIONS AT 27.5 GEV C/

We have measured the momentum correlation of pion pairs produced in th e collisions of 27.5 GeV/c protons in liquid hydrogen. By considering events for which all final state particles have been measured, we have succeeded in reducing backgrounds due to particle misidentification b elow 5% for pi+ and 1% for pi-. Our use of a precision magnetic spectr ometer has provided an accurate determination of particle momenta and excellent acceptance for particle pairs with small relative momentum e ssential for correlations studies. A large data sample of fully recons tructed events (1 X 10(6)) allows us to analyze the correlations for p i+pi+ and pi-pi- pairs separately, and also as a function of the final state multiplicity. We find that the pion pair correlations scale, 0. 98 fm describes the data well. We do not find any indication of multip licity dependence of the correlation scale for multiplicities from 6 t o 14 final state particles.