Universality of spectator fragmentation at relativistic bombarding energies

Multi-fragment decays of "1"2"9Xe, "1"9"7Au, and "2"3"8U projectiles in collisions with Be, C, Al, Cu, In, Au, and U targets at energies between E/A=400 MeV and 1000 MeV have been studied with the ALADIN forward-spectrometer at SIS. By adding an array of 84 Si-CsI(Tl) telescopes the solid-angle coverage of the setup was extended to #theta#_l_a_b=16 . This permitted the complete detection of fragments from the projectile-spectator source. The dominant feature of the systematic set of data is the Z_b_o_u_n_d universality that is obeyed by the fragment multiplicities and correlations. These observables are invariant with respect to the entrance channel if plotted as a function of Z_b_o_u_n_d, where Z_b_o_u_n_d is the sum of the atomic numbers Z_i of all projectile fragments with Z_i#>=#2. No significant dependence on the bombarding energy nor on the target mass is observed. The dependence of the fragment multiplicity on the projectile mass follows a linear scaling law. The reasons for and the limits of the observed universality of spectator fragmentation are explored within the realm of the available data and with model studies. It is found that the universal properties should persist up to much higher bombarding energies than explored in this work and that they are consistent with universal features exhibited by the intranuclear cascade and statistical multifragmentation models. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RO 801(96-26) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman