Fragmentation and particle production in interactions of 10.6 GeV/N gold nuclei with hydrogen, light and heavy targets

Abstract

We have investigated the interactions of 10.6 GeV/n Au in nuclear emulsion. Two methods of separating interactions into those with hydrogen, light (C,N,O) and heavy (Ag,Br) target nuclei were used, giving almost identical results, which strengthened our confidence in the correctness of these methods. We also measured the angular distributions of singly and multiply charged relativistic particles emitted from the interaction vertices and the charges of the multiply charged projectile fragments. The fragmentation of the projectile Au nuclei and of the target nuclei were analyzed. The multiparticle production was studied as a function of the mass of the target nucleus. The multiplicity and the pseudorapidity distributions of relativistic singly charged particles were compared with the predictions of the RQMD Model.