Abstract
The effect of a three-nucleon () interaction is studied for the production of high energy protons in heavy-ion collisions in the incident energy range of 44 to . The interaction is incorporated into the antisymmetrized molecular dynamics transport model of Ono [A. Ono, Phys. Rev. C 59, 853 (1999)] as a collision term, following a diagram of three consecutive binary collisions. For the theoretical reaction studies, no contribution from the collisions is observed for high energy proton production at the incident energy of . However when the incident energy increases, the contribution increases gradually. At and above, the contribution is observed as distinctly harder energy slopes in the proton energy spectra. The model is applied to the available Bevalac data for at , and . The experimental proton energy spectra are reasonably well reproduced at angles for all three incident energies, showing negligible contributions at and significant contributions at at the large laboratory angles. Good agreement at these large angles, where the collision is a major mechanism to produce such protons, strongly indicates for the first time the importance of the interaction in intermediate heavy ion reactions in a full transport calculation. The possible relation between the collision term and the short range and the tensor interactions is suggested.
- Received 17 May 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.96.031601
Published by the American Physical Society