Identical-particle interference in. pi. /sup -/p interactions at 40 GeV/c

Interference of identical ..pi.. mesons produced in ..pi../sup -/p interactions at 40 GeV/c is shown to exist. The method proposed by Kopylov and Podgoretskii is used to obtain an estimate of the size of the production region and the duration of the production process for secondary particles, R= (1.7 +- 0.3) x 10/sup -13/ cm and tau= (2.6 +- 1.7) x 10/sup -24/ sec.