Non-equilibrium emission of complex fragments from p+Au collisions at 2.5 GeV proton beam energy

TL;DR

This study investigates the complex mechanisms behind fragment emission in proton-gold collisions at 2.5 GeV, revealing the coexistence of intranuclear cascade and pre-equilibrium processes through detailed cross section measurements and phenomenological modeling.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis combining experimental data and a two-source phenomenological model to describe non-equilibrium fragment emission in p+Au collisions at 2.5 GeV.

Findings

High energy particles originate from pre-equilibrium breakup of the target.

Two reaction mechanisms contribute comparably to the cross sections.

The phenomenological model accurately describes all measured data.

Abstract

Energy and angular dependence of double differential cross sections d$^2\sigma$/d$\Omega$dE was measured for reactions induced by 2.5 GeV protons on Au target with isotopic identification of light products (H, He, Li, Be, and B) and with elemental identification of heavier intermediate mass fragments (C, N, O, F, Ne, Na, Mg, and Al). It was found that two different reaction mechanisms give comparable contributions to the cross sections. The intranuclear cascade of nucleon-nucleon collisions followed by evaporation from an equilibrated residuum describes low energy part of the energy distributions whereas another reaction mechanism is responsible for high energy part of the spectra of composite particles. Phenomenological model description of the differential cross sections by isotropic emission from two moving sources led to a very good description of all measured data. Values of the extracted parameters of the emitting sources are compatible with the hypothesis claiming that the high energy particles emerge from pre-equilibrium processes consisting in a breakup of the target into three groups of nucleons; small, fast and hot fireball of $\sim$ 8 nucleons, and two larger, excited prefragments, which emits the light charged particles and intermediate mass fragments. The smaller of them contains $\sim$ 20 nucleons and moves with velocity larger than the CM velocity of the proton projectile and the target. The heavier prefragment behaves similarly as the heavy residuum of the intranuclear cascade of nucleon-nucleon collisions. %The mass and charge dependence of the total production cross %sections was extracted from the above analysis for all observed %reaction products. This dependence follows the power low behavior %(A$^{-\tau}$ or Z$^{-\tau}$).