Evidence for the Systematic Behavior of Charged-Prong Multiplicity Distributions in High-Energy Proton-Proton Collisions

Evidence is presented to support the onset in the 50-303-GeV/c region of incident momentum of the asymptotic prediction of Koba, Nielsen, and Olesen regarding the scaling behavior of the charged-prong multiplicity distribution in proton-proton collisions. Lower-energy data, at 19 and 28.5 GeV/c, are found not to demonstrate this behavior. The impact of this observation on the Mueller-Regge viewpoint is discussed.