How to prevent tmux from wrapping around when searching

You have a couple of options.

1. Instead of running ls in your window, run a shell, then send the shell keystrokes to execute:

   tmux start-server  
   tmux new-session -d -s session  
   tmux new-window -t session:1  
   tmux send-keys -t session:1 ls C-m
   

2. You can lunch a sequence of commands in such a way as to leave yourself with a bash shell after your other commands have run:

   tmux start-server  
   tmux new-session -d
   tmux new-window 'ls;bash -i'
   

3. See jasonwryan's answer for details on the remain-on-exit option to keep panes alive after their process has exited so you can review the output.

4. If the output of some command was worth seeing once, it might be worth refreshing. If you are monitoring the output of something you can watch to periodically get new output. This should play nicely with panes in tmux:

   tmux start-server  
   tmux new-session -d
   tmux new-window 'watch -n 60 ls'
   

Try the rotate-window command, bound to Ctrl-o / Meta-o by default, or the swap-pane command, bound to { and } (the two choices operate in opposite directions).