The extent to which information about fluctuations in hadron-nucleon total cross sections in the frozen approximation can be extracted from very high energy hadron-nucleus total cross section measurements for a range of heavy nuclei is discussed. The corrections to the predictions of Glauber theory due to these fluctuations are calculated for several models for the distribution functions, and differences of the order of 50 mb are found for heavy nuclei. The generating function for the moments of the hadron-nucleon cross section distributions can be approximately determined from the derivatives of the hadron-nucleus total cross sections with respect to the nuclear geometric cross section. The argument of the generating function, however, is limited to the maximum value of a dimensionless thickness function obtained at zero impact parameter for the heaviest nuclear targets: about 1.8 for pions and 3.0 for nucleons.

• Received 9 March 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.52.926