Transverse energy measurements in proton-nucleus interactions at high-energy

The results of two sets of transverse energy measurements, performed with incident proton beams of 200 and 450 GeV/c momentum on several nuclear targets, are presented. The transverse energy cross sections dsigma/dE(T) are measured in a pseudorapidity range including the target fragmentation region (- 0.1 < eta < 2.9) for both data sets and also in a nearly complete pseudorapidity coverage (- 0.1 < eta < 5.5) for the data taken at 200 GeV/c incident momentum. A comparison is made of the transverse energy distributions in the target fragmentation region and in the full eta region. We find that the mean value of pseudorapidity of the dE(T)/deta distributions shifts towards the target fragmentation region as the atomic mass number of the target increases or a selection of high transverse energy events is made. A parametrization based on a simple geometrical nucleon-nucleon scattering approach was found to be inadequate to describe all features of the transverse energy distributions. Finally, the VENUS model is compared with the experimental data.