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The DIRAC experiment at CERN has achieved a sizeable production of $\pi^+\pi^-$ atoms and has significantly improved the precision on its lifetime determination. From a sample of 21227 atomic pairs, a 4% measurement of the S-wave $\pi\pi$ scattering length difference $|a_0-a_2| = (.0.2533^{+0.0080}_{-0.0078}|_\mathrm{stat}.{}^{+0.0078}_{-0.0073}|_\mathrm{syst})M_{\pi^+}^{-1}$ has been attained, providing an important test of Chiral Perturbation Theory., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

The multilevel trigger system of the DIRAC experiment at CERN is presented. It includes a fast first level trigger as well as various trigger processors to select events with a pair of pions having a low relative momentum typical of the physical process under study. One of these processors employs the drift chamber data, another one is based on a neural network algorithm and the others use various hit-map detector correlations. Two versions of the trigger system used at different stages of the experiment are described. The complete system reduces the event rate by a factor of 1000, with efficiency $\geq$95% of detecting the events in the relative momentum range of interest., Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures

We determine the $\pi NN$ and $\pi N\Delta$ formfactors from the $P_{11}$ resp. $P_{33}$ partial wave of $\pi N$ scattering by dressing corresponding bare vertices with the help of $\pi N$ non--pole contributions. The underlying model is based on meson exchange, and involves nucleon and delta--isobar pole and crossed--pole terms together with correlated $\pi\pi$--exchange in the $J^P=0^+$ ($\sigma$) and $1^-$ ($\rho$) channel. The results are very similar for $\pi NN$ and $\pi N\Delta$ and can be roughly parametrized by a monopole with cutoff mass $>$ 500 MeV, with some variation due to model dependencies. Thus the formfactors are much less soft than derived before for the $\pi NN$ case by Saito and Afnan using the same procedure but different $\pi N$ interaction models., Comment: 7 pages, 4 postscript figures

We perform a momentum-space calculation of the reaction $pp \rightarrow pp\pi ^0$ near threshold. Direct production and pion rescattering are taken into account. For the latter a T-matrix obtained from a microscopic model of the $\pi N$ interaction is employed. The effects of some approximations commonly used in studies of $ pp \rightarrow pp\pi ^0$ \ are discussed. We find that those approximations overestimate the cross section and also modify its energy dependence. We obtain a significant contribution from rescattering, but not nearly enough to describe the data.

We evaluate the contribution of second order terms to the pion-nucleus s-wave optical potential of pionic atoms generated by short range nuclear correlation. The corrections are sizeable because they involve the isoscalar s-wave $\pi N$ amplitude for half off-shell situations where the amplitude is considerably larger than the on-shell one. In addition, the s-wave optical potential is reanalyzed by looking at all the different conventional contributions together lowest order, Pauli corrected rescattering term, second order absorptive effects, terms from the interaction of pions with the virtual pion cloud (chiral corrections) and correlation effects. Different off-shell extrapolations for the $\pi N$ amplitude are used and it is found that, although some individual terms are sensitive to the extrapolation, the sum of them is rather insensitive. The results are compared with empirical values from best fits to the data and are found to be compatible, within theoretical and empirical uncertainties. The results do not rule out further contributions but they put stringent constraints on their strength., Comment: LaTex, 10 pages plus 3 figures (uuencoded, put with 'figures'). There are major modifications (including the title)

A microscopic model for the $N\bar N\to\pi\pi$ process is presented in the meson exchange framework, which in the pseudophysical region agrees with available quasiempirical information. The scalar ($\sigma$) and vector ($\rho$) piece of correlated two--pion exchange in the pion--nucleon interaction is then derived via dispersion integrals over the unitarity cut. Inherent ambiguities in the method and implications for the description of pion--nucleon scattering data are discussed., Comment: 20 pages, 11 postscript figures