Fragmentation of relativistic nuclei in peripheral interactions in nuclear track emulsion

TL;DR

This paper uses nuclear track emulsion techniques to study the peripheral fragmentation of relativistic light nuclei, revealing detailed dissociation patterns and the dominance of electromagnetic dissociation, with implications for nuclear astrophysics.

Contribution

It provides detailed experimental analysis of relativistic nuclear dissociation patterns and highlights the effectiveness of nuclear track emulsion in studying light nuclei fragmentation.

Findings

Relativistic dissociation of $^8$B shows specific decay patterns.

Electromagnetic dissociation dominates over proton break-ups.

Peripheral dissociation is a valuable tool for nuclear astrophysics studies.

Abstract

The technique of nuclear track emulsions is used to explore the fragmentation of light relativistic nuclei down to the most peripheral interactions - nuclear "white" stars. A complete pattern of therelativistic dissociation of a $^8$B nucleus with target fragment accompaniment is presented. Relativistic dissociation $^{9}$Be$\to2\alpha$ is explored using significant statistics and a relative contribution of $^{8}$Be decays from 0$^+$ and 2$^+$ states is established. Target fragment accompaniments are shown for relativistic fragmentation $^{14}$N$\to$3He+H and $^{22}$Ne$\to$5He. The leading role of the electromagnetic dissociation on heavy nuclei with respect to break-ups on target protons is demonstrated in all these cases. It is possible to conclude that the peripheral dissociation of relativistic nuclei in nuclear track emulsion is a unique tool to study many-body systems composed of lightest nuclei and nucleons in the energy scale relevant for nuclear astrophysics.