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

Abstract

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. © 1982 Springer-Verlag.