Published: 1979
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An experimental search was performed to look for the direct production of neutrinos or neutrino-like particles, i.e., neutral particles which interact weakly with hadrons, in proton-nucleus interactions at 400 GeV incident proton energy. Possible sources of such particles include the semi-leptonic decay of new heavy particles such as charm, and the direct production of a light neutral Higgs particle such as the axion. The production of these particles has been inferred in this experiment by energy nonconservation in the collision of a proton with an iron nucleus. The total visible energy of the interaction was measured using a sampling ionization calorimeter. After correcting for beam intensity effects and cutting the data to eliminate systematic effects in the measurement, the final resolution of the calorimeter was 3.51% and increased with decreasing incident beam energy with a square root dependence on the beam energy. Energy nonconservation in the data is manifest as a non-Gaussian distribution on the low side of the calorimeter measured energy. Model calculations yield the fraction of events expected in this non-Gaussian behavior for the various sources of neutrinos or neutrino-like particles. A maximum likelihood fit to the data with the theoretical fraction of events expected yields the 95% confidence level production cross section upper limit values. The upper limits for general production of neutrino-like particles for various parameterizations of the production cross section are presented. The following specific upper limits have been established: charm particle production