Projectile Fragmentation Products, D.J.Morrissey

Modern accelerators can provide beams of large nuclei with kinetic energies that are much larger than the repulsive Coulomb potential. When these energetic particles react with a target nucleus, the projectile nucleus moves forward along a straight lines past, or perhaps through, the edge of the target nucleus and is broken into smaller parts. We have shown that the pieces of the projectile from such processes, called projectile fragmentation reactions, are rather well described by simple geometrical cross sections when coupled to statistical deexcitation calculations of the intermediates. The momenta, or velocities, of the fragments are very similar to the initial velocity of the beam and also can be described by simple models. Probably the most important feature of these reactions is that the forward-going fragments can be passed through an isotope separator that removes the unreacted primary beam and other unwanted fragments to produce a secondary beam of radioactive ions.

The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory has a large fragment separator (called the A1900) that we are using to produce and study unknown exotic nuclei. In one of the first experiments using the A1200, the predecessor of the A1900 device now retired, we observed several new nuclei at the limit of nuclear stability. Such studies have extended our knowledge of the most unstable nuclei with atomic numbers in the range of 30 to 50. We have expanded our studies of these very exotic nuclei to include measurements of the beta-decay half-lives of the most exotic nuclei and exotic decay modes. Others have developed the technique of relativistic coulomb excitation for these fast fragments and the fusion of exotic nuclei has been investigated.

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djm - last update: 23-May-2006