Momentum distributions of projectile fragments produced in the cold and hot fragmentation of relativistic136Xe and197Au projectiles

The longitudinal-momentum distributions of projectile fragments from 0.8 A GeV¹³⁶Xe and 1 A GeV¹⁹⁷Au projectiles impinging on targets of beryllium and aluminium, respectively, have been measured using the projectile-fragment separator FRS at GSI. Different momentum distributions have been found for two different classes of fragmentation processes: the abundant hot fragmentation with several nucleons evaporated from the prefragments, and the rare cold fragmentation with only protons removed from the projectile, but no nucleons evaporated. The data are compared to model calculations.This article comprises part of the Ph.D. thesis of B. Voss