Mass-yield distribution in proton and heavy ion induced target fragmentation processes

• DOI: 10.1007/bf01420149
• Publication Date: 2005-04-11T17:45:26Z
• Authors: D. H. E. Gross; L. Satpathy; Meng Ta-chung; M. Satpathy
• Keywords: Fragmentation; Mass number; Semiclassical physics; Mass distribution

It is shown that nuclear target fragmentation in proton and heavy ion induced reactions, in particular the following experimental facts concerning the mass-yield distribution can be understood in terms of a semiclassical model:(i) its independence on the mass of the projectile at approximately the same incident energies,(ii) its trend of approaching a limit at higher bombarding energies,(iii) its “U-formed” shape at sufficiently high bombarding energies. Standard methods in statistical theory of chemical equilibrium are used to calculate the mass-yield distribution for medium and heavy target nuclei in high-energy nuclear reactions where the Coulomb interaction between the fragments is taken into account selfconsistently. The result shows: The fact that the decaying rest target nucleus and its fragments are bounded objects of finite size and finite charge have significant influences, especially on the form of the mass-yield distributions.