Quasi-elastic collisions of 925 MeV protons

Abstract

Quasi-elastic collisions of protons with protons bound in nuclei have been examined in G5 emulsions exposed to 925 mev protons from the Birmingham synchrotron. The directions of the secondary particles have been used to obtain values for two components of the momentum of the bound protons The observed momentum distribution may be described approximately by the function exp (−K/7)+0·05 exp (−K/40), where K is the energy of the bound proton in mev. The results show that (2·2±0·3)% of all nuclear reactions in the emulsion are quasi-elastic collisions with angle greater than 30° in the C-system of the two protons. This figure agrees with a calculation based on a semi-transparent nuclear model. The calculation indicates that such events contribute about 5% of the interactions with the light nuclei and about 0·7% of those with the heavy nuclei in the emulsion.