A study of long-term thermal annealing on lexan plastic track detector

Abstract

We have investigated fragmentation interactions of relativistic heavy ion projectiles using the plastic nuclear track detector CR-39 (C12H18O7). Stacks with detector foils and different targets have been exposed to Au- and Pb-ions at the Berkeley BEVALAC, the GSI Darmstadt SIS, the Brookhaven AGS and the CERN SPS. These experiments have been performed with high statistical significance. Charge yields and charge correlations determined for beam energies of 1, 10.6 and 158 A GeV were investigated. Our first experiments with 1 A GeV Au-nuclei have shown that the transverse momenta of the fragments are enlarged in comparison to a simple statistical model (Goldhaber model). For the new data at higher energies, we observed a dependence of the momentum transfer on the beam energy.