Charge spectra of projectile fragmentation at relativistic energy

Abstract

When charged particle passes through the detector medium, it transfers energy to the atoms or molecules of the surrounding medium. If the transferred energy is large enough to make the outer most orbital electron free and make the medium ionized. The rate of ionization depends on the square of the charge and inverse of the square of the velocity of the ionizing particle. Ionization measurements are a great help in the estimation of the charge of the projectile (84Kr36)’s fragments (PFs). Since, one method of charge estimation will not be suitable and valid for the wider range of charge PFs therefore, different methods for measurement of the rate of energy loss have been devised and are described in this article. In this study, we explored the nature of distribution of PFs at relativistic kinetic energy (around 1 GeV per nucleon). The cross checks of charge estimated with other methods reveal that the obtained charge spectrum has reached accuracy better than ± 1 charge unit. We have adopted methods for charge estimation of PFs up to the 10 charge units and after that we clubbed all other heavier fragments and called it as more than 10 charge units. It is evident that the production of single, double and more than 10 charge unit PFs have dependence on projectile mass number.