Abstract
Cross sections for the production of 35 radioactive nuclides extending from to by the interaction of 80-GeV ions with Cu have been measured. These are compared with existing results for other relativistic heavy ions and for 28-GeV protons incident on Cu targets of various thicknesses. Differences in shapes of the yield distributions for products with are inferred to arise primarily from increased secondary effects in the semithick targets used for the heavy-ion studies. The larger absolute cross sections (corrected to zero target thickness) for ions appear to be due solely to the increased total reaction cross section, , over that for protons. The production of target fragments with is estimated to account for ≅ 70% of . Calculations using realistic nuclear density distributions suggest that such products are formed in peripheral collisions (impact parameters ≳ 5 fm) in which there is no strong overlap of the cores of the and Cu nuclei. Lighter products are presumed to result from more central collisions, and these are enhanced by factors larger than expected from (a factor of 2 greater in the case of ). The application of the concepts of limiting fragmentation and factorization as a framework for the interpretation of highenergy heavy-ion induced reactions with complex nuclei is discussed.
NUCLEAR REACTIONS Cu(, spallation), GeV; measured , 35 products -; deduced mass yield and charge dispersion curves, target fragmentation cross sections. Natural targets, Ge(Li) counting, radiochemistry.
- Received 1 December 1977
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.17.1632
©1978 American Physical Society