The PbPb collision

Abstract

The reaction 208Pb on 208Pb was studied at bombarding energies of 7.0 and 7.57 MeV/u. One-particle inclusive measurements using a large-area position-sensitive ionisation chamber delivered the kinetic energy, charge and scattering angle of the reaction products. A precise calibration of the stopping power for very heavy ions in the detector gas was performed. The measured Wilczynski diagrams show, for increasing loss of kinetic energy, an increase of the mean scattering angle. It is attributed to the dominance of the repulsive Coulomb forces with respect to the attractive nuclear forces. The element distribution for the 208Pb on 238U reaction at 7.5 MeV/u was also measured and compared to the PbPb and UU reactions. Fission probabilities are derived as a function of charge and total kinetic energy loss. The most striking result is seen in the σ z 2 versus TKEL correlation: the average rate of energy loss per nucleon exchange is abnormally large. It is shown that this behaviour is associated with the double magic closed shell character of the colliding nuclei. Nuclear structure information is extracted through a simple parametrisation.