Binary projectile fragmentation of ¹²C at an incident energy of 33.3 MeV/nucleon

Direct binary projectile fragmentation is being investigated for the case where a 400 MeV ¹²C projectile breaks up into an a particle and a ⁸Be fragment in the interaction with a thin ⁹³Nb and ¹⁹⁷Au target. While the ⁸Be fragments were measured at 9°, the correlated a particles were detected in an angular range between 16° and 30° on the opposite side of the beam. From the preliminary results presented here one may obtain information on the amount of quasi-elastic fragmentation (both fragments do not suffer any further interactions after they are produced). These experimental results indicate that the quasi-elastic break-up process is the dominant contribution to the measured correlation spectra. As was also observed in earlier work, the most forward quasi-elastically emitted a particles have energies exceeding the beam velocity.