Neutrons from projectile fragmentation at 600 MeV/nucleon

The neutron emission in projectile fragmentation at relativistic energies was studied with the Large-Area-Neutron-Detector LAND coupled to the ALADIN forward spectrometer at the GSI Schwerionen-Synchrotron (SIS). Stable 124Sn and radioactive 107Sn and 124La beams with an incident energy of 600 MeV/nucleon were used to explore the N/Z dependence of the identified neutron source. A cluster-recognition algorithm is applied for identifying individual particles within the hit distributions registered with LAND. The obtained momentum distributions are extrapolated over the full phase space occupied by the neutrons from the projectile-spectator source. The mean multiplicities of spectator neutrons reach values of up to about 11 and depend strongly on the isotopic composition of the projectile. An effective source temperature of T \approx 2-5 MeV, monotonically increasing with decreasing impact parameter, is deduced from the transverse momentum distributions. For the interpretation of the data, calculations with the statistical multifragmentation model were performed. The variety of excited projectile spectators assumed to decay statistically is represented by an ensemble of excited sources with parameters determined previously from the fragment production observed in the same experiments. The obtained agreement is very satisfactory for more peripheral collisions where, according to the model, neutrons are mainly emitted during the secondary decays of excited fragments. The neutron multiplicity in more central collisions is underestimated, indicating that other sources besides the modeled statistical breakup contribute to the observed neutron yield. The choice made for the symmetry-term coefficient of the liquid-drop description of produced fragments has a weak effect on the predicted neutron multiplicities.