Contribution of the projectile neutrons to the total charge-changing cross sections

Abstract

We focus on the formulae currently used to calculate the total charge-changing cross sections (σcc), these formulae assume that the contribution of the projectile neutrons to the total charge-changing cross sections is small. We show that the dependence of the charge-changing cross sections on the projectile neutrons is strong as its dependence on the projectile protons. We estimate the contribution of the projectile neutrons to the total charge-changing cross sections to be about 40%, so neglecting the projectile neutron density in calculating σcc may not be adequate. Furthermore, we propose an empirical formula to evaluate the total charge-changing cross sections.