Probing heavy ion collisions with bremsstrahlung

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We calculate bremsstrahlung spectra for intermediate energy heavy ion collisions to see the sensitivity of photon cross sections to reaction dynamics. Modeling the collisions with the intranuclear cascade, we find a clear collective quadrupole bremsstrahlung signal only for heavier nuclei, A>40. Maximum sensitivity to dynamics is likely for photons in the range of 10–30 MeV. For higher energy photons or lighter nuclei, there is a large background coming from the incoherent dipole component of the bremsstrahlung.