High energy hadron-hadron collisions and internal hadron structure

Central particle emission in pp collisions at centre-of-mass energies >or approximately=20 GeV can be described in terms of independent cluster production. This process has been related to the quark-gluon picture of nucleon structure. The present paper carries this relation further and links the leading particle spectrum of non-diffractive hadron-hadron collisions to the xi distribution of quarks in the hadron. Thus, the flat leading to the steeply falling xi distribution of quarks in nucleon, as deduced from the structure functions measured in deep inelastic scattering of electrons and neutrinos on nucleons. The analysis is extended to meson-nucleon collisions and leads to a prediction of the general shape of the quark xi distribution in a meson. (17 refs).