Fragmentation of target spectators in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We demonstrate that the assumption that target spectators fragment isotropically in a gently moving coordinate system is in agreement with pseudorapidity distributions, measured in central ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions of projectile energy from 14.5A GeV to 200A GeV. Target spectator remnants might be excluded from measurement by introducing a low energy cutoff for the accepted particles at approximately 200 MeV. An approximate scaling is presented for the pseudorapidity distribution of the target spectator fragments. Theoretical tools used for studying intermediate energy heavy ion collisions seem to be applicable in describing target spectator fragmentation in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions.