Intranuclear cascade calculation of high-energy heavy-ion interactions

Abstract

We have extended the intranuclear cascade model of Chen et al. to high-energy reactions between two heavy ions. The results of the calculations are compared with experimental results for the inclusive proton and pion cross sections, two-particle correlations, particle multiplicity distributions, and spallation cross section distributions from light (${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$ + ${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$) to heavy (${}_{}{}^{40}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Ar}$ + ${}_{}{}^{238}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{U}$) projectile-target systems in the laboratory bombarding energy range $\frac{E}{A}=250-1000\mathrm{}$ MeV. The comparison shows that the model is fairly successful in reproducing the various aspects of high-energy reactions between heavy ions. The discrepancies between the calculations and the experimental results are probably due to shortcomings of the present calculation, particularly the neglect of interactions between cascade particles, and do not provide strong evidence for cooperative phenomena in high-energy heavy-ion reactions. We also show that the assumption that high particle multiplicities are indicative of central (small impact parameter) collisions is well founded for heavy projectile-target systems.