The third particle in deep inelastic collisions

Angular correlations between charged reaction products have been measured for the reaction¹⁴N+²⁷A1 at 70 and 100 MeV. Light particle evaporation from the heavy recoil is shown to be the dominant process. In addition, however fast alphas are observed for all reaction channels. From the three-body kinematics we conclude that these alphas are emitted from the contact zone between the two heavy ions. A comparison of the results forE _Lab=70 and 100 MeV excludes an explanation of this process by the recently suggested “Piston” or “hot-spot” models.