Nuclear interactions of super-high-energy alpha-particles

Abstract

Angular distributions of secondaries from collisions of α-particles with energies higher than 1012 eV/nucleon with emulsion nuclei have been analysed. It has been found that the group of jets with small evaporations (Ng≤5) and small multiplicities (ns≤20) is due to collisions of a single nucleon from the α-particle, the angular distribution of secondaries being quite similar to those in nucleon-nucleon collisions. The angular distributions of jets with Nh≤5, 20 0.6 show a double maximum structure and can be explained as a superposition of angular distributions from independent collisions of two or three nucleons from the α-particle. However, angular distributions of jets with α primaries andNh> 8 can be described by a normal distribution which is not the case for jets with nucleon primaries.