Hadron Production: Present Knowledge and Future Plans

Hadron production is a key ingredient in many aspects of neutrino physics. Precise prediction of atmospheric neutrino fluxes, characterization of accelerator neutrino beams, quantification of pion production and capture for neutrino factory designs, all of these would profit from hadron production measurements. For all these reasons this is a well established field since the '70s. In more recent times, low-energy hadron production experiments operating in the range from 1 GeV to 100 GeV are being operated, built or proposed. Such experiments all share a basic design, consisting in the presence of open-geometry spectrometers, as close as possible to full angular coverage, and the aim of full particle identification.