CHARGE-DISTRIBUTION OF PROJECTILE FRAGMENTS IN HIGH-ENERGY HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

The breakup of the projectile nucleus in a high-energy heavy-ion collision is considered within a two-step model. In the first step, an excited spectator prefragment of the projectile is formed. In the second step, the prefragment decays by emission of a number of light fragments leaving a residual nucleus whose identity is defined by conservation of total charge. The dependence of the multiplicities of fragments on their charges is calculated assuming that fragment emission is a Poisson random process. Averaging over the spectator charge and excluding very peripheral events, the theory is able to reproduce the experimental data on the fragmentation of gold by silver nuclei.