Light-ion production from intermediate-energy Heavy-Ion interactions

The production of light ions such as protons, neutrons, deuterons, tritons, 3He and 4He from heavy ion interactions still remains as a key issue to be investigated for the purposes of radiation protection in space. Ultimately, we will produce double-differential spectra for high-energy light ion production from several heavy-ion experiments conducted at the Heavy-Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) facility in Japan. The analysis will entail pulse-shape discrimination techniques folded with a time-of-flight reconstruction of particle energy that will involve corrections due to energy loss in intervening materials between the target and detectors. The data were measured at angles between 5 and 80 degrees in the laboratory, over a wide range of systems.. The data, together with previously measured neutron spectra from the same experiments, can help further investigate various physics models used to produce light ions in transport calculations, such as the commonly-used coalescence model.