The methodics of the identification of pi /sup -/p elastic interactions in bubble chamber

A method for elastic events separation from the prong-events in a hydrogen bubble chamber exposed to pi /sup -/ meson beams is presented. It is argued that for elastic events the simultaneous cuts in the angle of coplanarity and the angular kinematical correlation are less sensitive to the experimental errors than in other kinematical correlations. The proposed methodics is compared with other current techniques for elastic events identification. The method for elastic events separation has been tested on a sample of two prong-events from the CERN 2 m H/sub 2/ bubble chamber exposed to a beam of 16 GeV/c pi /sup -/ mesons. The processing of elastic events candidates is presented too. (36 refs)