I thought I knew what single inclusive scattering was, but today when I went to look up a definition to check my memory, I couldn't find one. A Google search yielded no shortage of papers that use the term, but no definition or explanation in the first several pages of results. I'm asking here so I'll have something to look up if/when I forget again: what specifically does "single inclusive" mean in particle phenomenology?
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$\begingroup$ what kind of scatterings are you looking at? could you provide a sample paper? $\endgroup$– luksenCommented Sep 21, 2011 at 8:55
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$\begingroup$ arxiv.org/abs/1001.1378 is related to the project I'm working on at the moment, but I'm hoping for as general an answer as possible. $\endgroup$– David ZCommented Sep 21, 2011 at 17:20
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$\begingroup$ In your link they are talking of single hadron inclusive spectra, I suppose in contrast to two hadron spectra ( resonance searches for example) or single jet spectra . $\endgroup$– anna vCommented Sep 21, 2011 at 18:19
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$\begingroup$ I generally take the term "inclusive" to mean that I should email the authors and ask for clarification. It's such a jargon word in HEP that I wouldn't trust any guesses if there's any ambiguity. $\endgroup$– ShepCommented May 24, 2014 at 12:36
1 Answer
In my opinion it is context dependent and that is why you do not find a definition.
Inclusive is used when a cross section in an interaction includes all channels that fulfil the criteria. The criteria are usually of picking one particle or reaction and measuring the crossection. Example: muon inclusive crossection in proton proton scattering will be looking at the number of muons hitting the muon detectors inclusively, i.e. regardless of the detail reactions in each event. In this context single inclusive would mean to find events that have only a single muon detected in the muon detectors. This should be clear from the context in the paper.