NUCLEAR FRAGMENTATION AND THE THERMAL LIQUID DROP MODEL (PHASE TRANSITION)
Abstract
This thesis contains the details of the experimental setup and preliminary results of an experiment to measure the products of nuclear fragmentation produced in the interaction of xenon nuclei with high energy protons in the threshold energy region (1 to 28 GeV incident energy). In this experiment the fragment's charge (2 (LESSTHEQ) Z (LESSTHEQ) 13) and kinetic energy were determined as a function of incident proton energy for scattering angles in the lab frame of 48.5(DEGREES) and 131.5(DEGREES). The general procedures involved in the offline data analysis are outlined and the preliminary results are presented. The fragment cross sections were found to increase by a factor of ten from 1 to 10 GeV incident proton energy. Forward peaking of fragment cross sections was observed and F/B ratios were seen to approach 1 as incident energies reached 20 GeV. A description of the high energy p-nucleus reaction picture is presented based on the current level of understanding of nuclear fragmentation with emphasis on the experimental evidence. The details of the Thermal Liquid Drop Model (TLDM), which accurately describes the products of fragmentation based on the assumption of a critical point phenomena are reviewed. The charge dispersion for nuclear fragmentation is derived from the TLDM and fits to earlier fragment data are presented. A brief summary is presented of the current experimental knowledge of nuclear fragmentation. In connection with this, a general analysis of the successes and failures of other model's approaches to describing the products of nuclear fragmentation is included. The conclusion is that any other approach than the critical phenomena assumption of the TLDM fails to describe some aspect of the experimental data.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Nuclear physics
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