New Feature of Long-Range Correlations in Hadron-nucleusInteractions

A new characteristic phenomenon of the dependence of long-range correlations among produced particles on the number of recoiled protons, N_p, in hadron-nucleus collisions at high energy is found in our investigation by using the data of the NA5 experiments at CERN/SPS, which shows an obvious stepwise structure in the correlation strength as a function of the upper limit of N_p. A model based on the concept of effective target is proposed to explain this phenomenon.