SEARCH FOR HIGHER TWISTS IN MESON RESONANCE PRODUCTION IN PI(-) N-INTERACTIONS AT P(T)GREATER-THAN-OR-EQUAL-TO-2 GEV C/

We study the production of meson resonance at p(T) greater than or equ al to 2 GeV/c in pi(-) Be interactions at two beam energies (150 and 3 00 GeV/c). The motivation is to look for the higher twist (HT) product ion mechanism, expected to exist besides standard hadron production th rough the fragmentation process of scattered quarks and gluons, the so -called leading twist (LT) mechanism. We show that the phi, (K) over b ar(0)(892) and K*(0)(892) are found free from HT effects with a good accuracy, as expected from HT estimates and QCD sum rules. The magnitu des of the f(2)(1270) and rho(0) mesons signals are found larger than expected from the standard Lund (LT) Monte Carlo and from information provided by e(+)e(-) annihilation experiments. The possible connection of these excesses with HT physics is discussed. We also report the fi rst evidence for the production of f(0)(975) mesons in hadronic experi ments at large p(T).