Author(s)

Wolfram Westmeier, Reinhard Brandt, Reza Hashemi-Nezhad, Reinhard Odoj, Wolfgang Ensinger, Maria Zamani-Valasiadou, Andrei Sosnin

Fachbereich Chemie, Philipps-Universit?t Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
Fachbereich Materialwissenschaften, Technische Universit?t, Darmstadt, Germany.
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany.
Gesellschaft für Kernspektrometrie mbH, Ebsdorfergrund, Germany.
Institute of Nuclear Science, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia.
Physics Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Hellas.

A new concept is introduced for the classification of “unresolved problems” in the understanding of interactions in thick targets irradiated with relativistic ions: The centre-of-mass energy per nucleon of a hypothetical compound nucleus from a primary interaction, E_CM/u, is calculated and correlated with experimental observations in thick target irradia- tions. One observes in various reactions of relativistic primary ions with thick targets that there appears to be a thresh- old energy for reactions leading to “unresolved problems” which lies around E_CM/u ~ 150 MeV. All “unresolved prob- lems” are exclusively observed above this threshold, whereas below this threshold no “unresolved problems” are found. A similar threshold at 158 ± 3 MeV exists for massive pion production in nuclear interactions. Hagedorn had proposed this threshold decades ago and it is known as the Hagedorn limit. In this paper we will only mention, but not elaborate on Hagedorn’s theoretical concept any further. Some considerations will be presented and further studies in this field are suggested.

Thick Target; High Energy Projectile; Neutron Multiplicity; Mass Distribution

W. Westmeier, R. Brandt, R. Hashemi-Nezhad, R. Odoj, W. Ensinger, M. Zamani-Valasiadou and A. Sosnin, "Correlations in Nuclear Interactions between E_CM/u and Unexplained Experimental Observables," World Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, Vol. 2 No. 4, 2012, pp. 125-132. doi: 10.4236/wjnst.2012.24018.